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> It has nothing to do with economics Nuclear power is not profitable. It has nothing to do with regulation and everything to do with economics. If nuclear pow

> It has nothing to do with economics Nuclear power is not profitable. It has nothing to do with regulation and everything to do with economics. If nuclear power were profitable, you could not stop it. If nuclear power were profitable, the regulations would change with a quickness, because motivated investors remove any and all roadblocks to their money. If it wasn't for the absurdly bad economics, bad track record proven bad for 7 decades bad, you could not stop investors from building a nuclear power plant in every county in the US. I promise you that you can have all the nuclear power plants you want, but all you need to do is make it make money. Make nuclear power profitable, and the world is your oyster. Because we need it, and the pronuke crowd is stuck in the mud moaning about regulations and doing nothing but being annoying. It isn't the regulations. Even if the nuclear industry were entirely unregulated, it still couldn't generate profit. There is a huge problem, and it isn't the regulations. Every new plant design is more expensive than the last. Make cheaper nuclear plants. It is that simple. Scale it down or scale it up, I don't know, but do something other than allow it to be unprofitable and keep bitching about regulations... rather than design a plant that has a sane build and operating cost, draw in investors, let them deal with the regulations, and retire with a fortune. But no, instead we get blaming and finger pointing. It is the money, and that is all it is. Make it make money, please, make it make money.

CyanBird 4y ago
> Make nuclear power profitable I mean, I would like to say that "people have made them profitable" "but then they blew up" But I would be being too hyperbolic, as I would not say per se that the rmbk reactors where all that profitable at the time, tho they were certainly cheap tho But yeah, issue with nuclear is a cursed triad of Having nuclear reactors be cheap Having nuclear reactors be on schedule Having nuclear reactors be safe Choose 2 from above Even the AP1400 fail the test above, as more than a couple of them at least in China have been build over/close by seismic faults and in shores with tsunami risk The fact that Toshiba nearly went bankrupt trying to build ap1000 nuclear reactors ought say it all
- charlieyu1 4y ago
  And China isn’t building major nuclear plants anywhere near the capital. All on southeast.
  - azurezyq 4y ago
    It's not true. For example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiyang_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiyang_Nuclear_Power_Plant
    - prawn 4y ago
      550km away, for anyone else curious. (Not implying this is or isn't far away.)
systemvoltage 4y ago
You're mixing up the matters and has gotten it backwards. The industry has been regulated to teeth after scare mongering by environmentalists post Chernobyl/3-mile-island. It has wiped out any hopes for private industry to build and hope to bring down costs by economies of scale. Too much regulation leads to death of economies of scale. If software was regulated like nuclear power, say because of hypothetical AI risks; then we'd never have anything. Software would have been written by large corporations who have the funds to penetrate the regulations. Let's not take one iota of blame away from regulations. It needs to be brought naked to people to see why environmentalists have gotten themselves into a chinese finger trap (want to save the world but without nuclear).
- Maursault 4y ago
  Except, it was never the regulations. A nuclear power plant costs between $6B - $9B to build, before it generates any electricity, that is just the construction cost these days for a 1100MW plant Regulatory costs for a nuclear power plant will range between $7M - $15M annually. Do the math: it is definitely not the regulations. Any time someone complains about regulations, you know there is a Republican agenda. We need regulations, because they are the only thing preventing Big Business from enslaving you and me and worse. Regulations are good. Unless you make more than $400K/yr, stop doing the 1%er's jobs for them making sure most of the wealth is controlled by just a few by... removing regulations which really only bothers them because it means they make slightly less of the fortune they'd make without it. The money is what is important. Your money should be important to you, so please make sure you only support agendas that work for your personal economic interests rather than the interests of the richest of the rich. If everyone always voted in their personal economic interests, we'd see a boom economy. The problem is, 99% of the Republican Party is literally voting adversely to their economic interests. They are voting to keep themselves economically stagnant and also to make sure the rich stay rich, for that day that will never come when they are rich, or maybe it is the absolute distractions that do not affect economy, like abortion or 2nd A. issues. If everyone only voted in their personal economic interests, and ignored all other concerns, there could not be a Republican Party. Well, there would be, but it would only have about 20 members, all listed among the top 25 richest Amercans. Most people aren't rich, and could benefit from better opportunity, which will never come so long as a minority party somehow has and has had control of the Senate for 18 of the last 20 years. If you care about your money, you should be on board with making DC and Puerto Rico legitimate US States, tax them and let them vote, and let's progress as a nation, rather than stagnating.
webmaven 4y ago
> There is a huge problem, and it isn't the regulations. Every new plant design is more expensive than the last. Make cheaper nuclear plants. It is that simple. Scale it down or scale it up, I don't know, but do something other than allow it to be unprofitable and keep bitching about regulations... rather than design a plant that has a sane build and operating cost, Part of the problem here is encapsulated in "every new plant design". What you aren't saying is that practically every new plant is a new design. There are multiple reasons for this. One is a bit of a chicken and egg issue: because starting up new nuclear power projects is rare, it has probably been quite a few years since the last time someone started one. So the last plans you used probably need a serious update. Another is NIMBYism that takes the firm of objections thrown up arbitrarily that require changes to be made. The answer is as you suggested, to scale the plant size down, and the number of them up: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor
concordDance 4y ago
> Even if the nuclear industry were entirely unregulated, it still couldn't generate profit. I recommend doing some simple arithmetic here. This is simply false: As the article points out, reactors used to be under $2000/kw (this is with some regulation, just not onerous amounts). The UK electricity wholesale price is currently at £100/MWh, so at current prices your new plant in the deregulated world (which will take 5 years to make) will make back its construction costs (ignoring operating costs for now as nuclear is dominated by capital costs) in two years of operation. That's a damn good rate of return compared to most businesses.
- diegocg 4y ago
  Regulations aren't some random worthless bullshit imposed by bureaucrats. They are the consequence of nuclear accidents. Dreaming of a world without regulations in the nuclear sector is just as stupid as a world without regulations in the airline industry. It just won't happen and pretending that there some kind of environmentalist plot behind the regulations won't make these regulations less necessary. There is no way you can recover the investment costs of a modern nuclear plan in two years. It takes a very long time to recover the money (decades), and this is the main reason why investors are just not interested in nuclear plants. They have to lend money long term, and in that time lots of things can happen - from renewable technology being discovered, to changes in prices of nuclear fuel and geopolitics. You essentially can't predict the profit of a nuclear plant in the far future, and that means you can't predict how fast the investment is going to get repaid. It's just not an attractive investment, which is why some modern nuclear plants can't go ahead without some kind of government support.
  - concordDance 4y ago
    > They are the consequence of nuclear accidents. These regulations are only cost effective if you have a value of human life at a billion dollars! Looks at the actual accident rate and how bad they were in the 70s when nuclear power was reasonably priced. It is very much not worth increasing the price of nuclear by 5x, can just keep the regulations as they were and invest that money in healthcare to save 1000x as many people. > It takes a very long time to recover the money (decades In the overegulated world where nuclear power is 5x more expensive than it once was, yes. We aren't talking about that world though.
AtlasBarfed 4y ago
Well, there's a lot of hidden assumptions here. If by "nuclear" you mean pressurized solid fuel reactors, well yeah I agree. But EVERY nuclear idea out there? Come on, the orders of magnitude of power density, availability of thorium an others for fuel, there has to be SOME design that is safe and economical. But "economics" is a moving target with Solar/Wind cost improvements year on year. That will eventually stabilize. Then there's a fixed target. I hope that: 1) this target puts all the PWR people and their entrenched regulatory influence and reprocessing and lobbying to death. That does exist, and it is a major blocker. Too many people are making money as old nuclear circles the drain. When that gets permanently put to bed, then ... 2) Then some LFTR/pebblebed/whatever design starts getting actually researched and invested in. The LFTR people claim that it's illegal to do liquid reactor research, which is why the pebble bed is being researched. I don't know the regs to know if they are telling the truth, but it does show lots of "chilling effects". Then you target an actual number. Probably would require an iterable and scalable design. Space may be the other good pusher. But it's going to be a couple decades before nuclear should think about pushing anything to market, and the old nuclear should be shut down when battery storage gets good enough to replace it. A couple decades is a generation, and it will clear the table of the old guard.

CyanBird 4y ago

> Make nuclear power profitable I mean, I would like to say that "people have made them profitable" "but then they blew up" But I would be being too hyperbolic, as I would not say per se that the rmbk reactors where all that profitable at the time, tho they were certainly cheap tho But yeah, issue with nuclear is a cursed triad of Having nuclear reactors be cheap Having nuclear reactors be on schedule Having nuclear reactors be safe Choose 2 from above Even the AP1400 fail the test above, as more than a couple of them at least in China have been build over/close by seismic faults and in shores with tsunami risk The fact that Toshiba nearly went bankrupt trying to build ap1000 nuclear reactors ought say it all

charlieyu1 4y ago
And China isn’t building major nuclear plants anywhere near the capital. All on southeast.
- azurezyq 4y ago
  It's not true. For example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiyang_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiyang_Nuclear_Power_Plant
  - prawn 4y ago
    550km away, for anyone else curious. (Not implying this is or isn't far away.)

systemvoltage 4y ago

You're mixing up the matters and has gotten it backwards. The industry has been regulated to teeth after scare mongering by environmentalists post Chernobyl/3-mile-island. It has wiped out any hopes for private industry to build and hope to bring down costs by economies of scale. Too much regulation leads to death of economies of scale. If software was regulated like nuclear power, say because of hypothetical AI risks; then we'd never have anything. Software would have been written by large corporations who have the funds to penetrate the regulations. Let's not take one iota of blame away from regulations. It needs to be brought naked to people to see why environmentalists have gotten themselves into a chinese finger trap (want to save the world but without nuclear).

Maursault 4y ago
Except, it was never the regulations. A nuclear power plant costs between $6B - $9B to build, before it generates any electricity, that is just the construction cost these days for a 1100MW plant Regulatory costs for a nuclear power plant will range between $7M - $15M annually. Do the math: it is definitely not the regulations. Any time someone complains about regulations, you know there is a Republican agenda. We need regulations, because they are the only thing preventing Big Business from enslaving you and me and worse. Regulations are good. Unless you make more than $400K/yr, stop doing the 1%er's jobs for them making sure most of the wealth is controlled by just a few by... removing regulations which really only bothers them because it means they make slightly less of the fortune they'd make without it. The money is what is important. Your money should be important to you, so please make sure you only support agendas that work for your personal economic interests rather than the interests of the richest of the rich. If everyone always voted in their personal economic interests, we'd see a boom economy. The problem is, 99% of the Republican Party is literally voting adversely to their economic interests. They are voting to keep themselves economically stagnant and also to make sure the rich stay rich, for that day that will never come when they are rich, or maybe it is the absolute distractions that do not affect economy, like abortion or 2nd A. issues. If everyone only voted in their personal economic interests, and ignored all other concerns, there could not be a Republican Party. Well, there would be, but it would only have about 20 members, all listed among the top 25 richest Amercans. Most people aren't rich, and could benefit from better opportunity, which will never come so long as a minority party somehow has and has had control of the Senate for 18 of the last 20 years. If you care about your money, you should be on board with making DC and Puerto Rico legitimate US States, tax them and let them vote, and let's progress as a nation, rather than stagnating.

webmaven 4y ago

> There is a huge problem, and it isn't the regulations. Every new plant design is more expensive than the last. Make cheaper nuclear plants. It is that simple. Scale it down or scale it up, I don't know, but do something other than allow it to be unprofitable and keep bitching about regulations... rather than design a plant that has a sane build and operating cost, Part of the problem here is encapsulated in "every new plant design". What you aren't saying is that practically every new plant is a new design. There are multiple reasons for this. One is a bit of a chicken and egg issue: because starting up new nuclear power projects is rare, it has probably been quite a few years since the last time someone started one. So the last plans you used probably need a serious update. Another is NIMBYism that takes the firm of objections thrown up arbitrarily that require changes to be made. The answer is as you suggested, to scale the plant size down, and the number of them up: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor

concordDance 4y ago

> Even if the nuclear industry were entirely unregulated, it still couldn't generate profit. I recommend doing some simple arithmetic here. This is simply false: As the article points out, reactors used to be under $2000/kw (this is with some regulation, just not onerous amounts). The UK electricity wholesale price is currently at £100/MWh, so at current prices your new plant in the deregulated world (which will take 5 years to make) will make back its construction costs (ignoring operating costs for now as nuclear is dominated by capital costs) in two years of operation. That's a damn good rate of return compared to most businesses.

diegocg 4y ago
Regulations aren't some random worthless bullshit imposed by bureaucrats. They are the consequence of nuclear accidents. Dreaming of a world without regulations in the nuclear sector is just as stupid as a world without regulations in the airline industry. It just won't happen and pretending that there some kind of environmentalist plot behind the regulations won't make these regulations less necessary. There is no way you can recover the investment costs of a modern nuclear plan in two years. It takes a very long time to recover the money (decades), and this is the main reason why investors are just not interested in nuclear plants. They have to lend money long term, and in that time lots of things can happen - from renewable technology being discovered, to changes in prices of nuclear fuel and geopolitics. You essentially can't predict the profit of a nuclear plant in the far future, and that means you can't predict how fast the investment is going to get repaid. It's just not an attractive investment, which is why some modern nuclear plants can't go ahead without some kind of government support.
- concordDance 4y ago
  > They are the consequence of nuclear accidents. These regulations are only cost effective if you have a value of human life at a billion dollars! Looks at the actual accident rate and how bad they were in the 70s when nuclear power was reasonably priced. It is very much not worth increasing the price of nuclear by 5x, can just keep the regulations as they were and invest that money in healthcare to save 1000x as many people. > It takes a very long time to recover the money (decades In the overegulated world where nuclear power is 5x more expensive than it once was, yes. We aren't talking about that world though.

AtlasBarfed 4y ago

Well, there's a lot of hidden assumptions here. If by "nuclear" you mean pressurized solid fuel reactors, well yeah I agree. But EVERY nuclear idea out there? Come on, the orders of magnitude of power density, availability of thorium an others for fuel, there has to be SOME design that is safe and economical. But "economics" is a moving target with Solar/Wind cost improvements year on year. That will eventually stabilize. Then there's a fixed target. I hope that: 1) this target puts all the PWR people and their entrenched regulatory influence and reprocessing and lobbying to death. That does exist, and it is a major blocker. Too many people are making money as old nuclear circles the drain. When that gets permanently put to bed, then ... 2) Then some LFTR/pebblebed/whatever design starts getting actually researched and invested in. The LFTR people claim that it's illegal to do liquid reactor research, which is why the pebble bed is being researched. I don't know the regs to know if they are telling the truth, but it does show lots of "chilling effects". Then you target an actual number. Probably would require an iterable and scalable design. Space may be the other good pusher. But it's going to be a couple decades before nuclear should think about pushing anything to market, and the old nuclear should be shut down when battery storage gets good enough to replace it. A couple decades is a generation, and it will clear the table of the old guard.