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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-m

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.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  > A nuclear power plant costs between $6B - $9B to build Why? Why not $20M or at the absolute worse $200M? > Regulatory costs for a nuclear power plant will range between $7M - $15M annually. This is disenginous number. Every single supplier, compliance, proposal, EVERYTHING about nuclear is regulated. Behind this $7M-$15M on paper costs, lies the true cost of regulations: $6B-$9B. > 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. Strange thing to say.
  - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
    So you're saying that if we removed the regulation and built cheap reactors each reactor might cost -1 billion dollars to construct? Sign me up!
    - systemvoltage 4y ago
      I would even question why construction costs so much in US vs. say China. It is all entirely full of regulations. Not labor. Material costs are probably minscule % if you scoure the entire supply chain for regulations. The discussion whether certain regulations (OSHA) are needed or not is an entirely different conversation, but having worked on large government/military contracts ($1B+); I have seen the shitshow with my own eyes and mind. Gross incompetence of Gov (and its contractors) x Regulatory Capture x Lack of Innovation = Current dysfunction. I am not saying China is the role model for safety regulations, but we need to take a deep look at what's necessary and what's not. SpaceX will make reusable rockets a few orders of magnitude cheaper than anything NASA has produced. And current NASA administration has been forthcoming in working with private industry (SpaceX, BO, Rocketlab, Firefly, etc.). Good.
      - Maursault 4y ago
        > I would even question why construction costs so much in US vs. say China. The difference is in manufacturing and labor costs. If you want to build cheap, you can do so in Mexico at half the manufacturing and labor costs of China, which is about 1/7th that of good ol' fashioned USofA manufacturing and labor. You should have already known this. Nothing to see here.
stkdump 4y ago
TFA says that the reactor part of a plant only makes up ~25% of the construction costs. The rest is the same that coal plants also have to deal with.
cycomanic 4y ago
Seriously did nobody read the article?! Is this reddit or Slashdot?! The article goes through the calculations, it shows that even with deregulation LWRs would not be competitive. It says that other designs might be, if they ever get off the ground. And let's not discuss the fact that regulation affects many markets which work perfectly fine and when lifes depend on it they should be. I'd rather not that the CRT gives me a deadline dose of radiation because the programmer was playing fast and loose with his unit conversions.
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  Uh, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 In that case, the problem wasn't conversion units, but race conditions. Anyway, three people died because the radiation therapy unit burnt them with lethal doses of radiation, because of a software error.
- concordDance 4y ago
  > And let's not discuss the fact that regulation affects many markets which work perfectly fine and when lifes depend on it they should be. I'm unconvinced a sane person could look at the other most heavily regulated market, healthcare, and say it works "perfectly fine". > The article goes through the calculations, it shows that even with deregulation LWRs would not be competitive. The numbers given in the article of $53/MWh are currently less than half the current UK wholesale electricity price and renewables impose increasing costs as they become a larger share of your electricity mix (renewables are not even remotely competitive if you also had to pay for even a single day of electricity storage, which would cost at least $4000/kw[1]). Deregulated nuclear would be much cheaper than wind&solar+storage. [1] https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2019/07/f65/Storage%20Cost%20and%20Performance%20Characterization%20Report_Final.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2019/07/f65/Stora...
prawn 4y ago
I think they're suggesting that industry motivated by profits will out-lobby environmentalists and anyone else. I've seen it suggested that the anti-nuclear message was propped up by the coal industry who saw it as a direct threat. Environmentalists have made minimal headway against Murdoch media here in Australia, struggled to make progress against coal/mining, etc. Industrial lobbyists have far more money and power.

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.

systemvoltage 4y ago
> A nuclear power plant costs between $6B - $9B to build Why? Why not $20M or at the absolute worse $200M? > Regulatory costs for a nuclear power plant will range between $7M - $15M annually. This is disenginous number. Every single supplier, compliance, proposal, EVERYTHING about nuclear is regulated. Behind this $7M-$15M on paper costs, lies the true cost of regulations: $6B-$9B. > 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. Strange thing to say.
- adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
  So you're saying that if we removed the regulation and built cheap reactors each reactor might cost -1 billion dollars to construct? Sign me up!
  - systemvoltage 4y ago
    I would even question why construction costs so much in US vs. say China. It is all entirely full of regulations. Not labor. Material costs are probably minscule % if you scoure the entire supply chain for regulations. The discussion whether certain regulations (OSHA) are needed or not is an entirely different conversation, but having worked on large government/military contracts ($1B+); I have seen the shitshow with my own eyes and mind. Gross incompetence of Gov (and its contractors) x Regulatory Capture x Lack of Innovation = Current dysfunction. I am not saying China is the role model for safety regulations, but we need to take a deep look at what's necessary and what's not. SpaceX will make reusable rockets a few orders of magnitude cheaper than anything NASA has produced. And current NASA administration has been forthcoming in working with private industry (SpaceX, BO, Rocketlab, Firefly, etc.). Good.
    - Maursault 4y ago
      > I would even question why construction costs so much in US vs. say China. The difference is in manufacturing and labor costs. If you want to build cheap, you can do so in Mexico at half the manufacturing and labor costs of China, which is about 1/7th that of good ol' fashioned USofA manufacturing and labor. You should have already known this. Nothing to see here.

stkdump 4y ago

TFA says that the reactor part of a plant only makes up ~25% of the construction costs. The rest is the same that coal plants also have to deal with.

cycomanic 4y ago

Seriously did nobody read the article?! Is this reddit or Slashdot?! The article goes through the calculations, it shows that even with deregulation LWRs would not be competitive. It says that other designs might be, if they ever get off the ground. And let's not discuss the fact that regulation affects many markets which work perfectly fine and when lifes depend on it they should be. I'd rather not that the CRT gives me a deadline dose of radiation because the programmer was playing fast and loose with his unit conversions.

inglor_cz 4y ago
Uh, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 In that case, the problem wasn't conversion units, but race conditions. Anyway, three people died because the radiation therapy unit burnt them with lethal doses of radiation, because of a software error.
concordDance 4y ago
> And let's not discuss the fact that regulation affects many markets which work perfectly fine and when lifes depend on it they should be. I'm unconvinced a sane person could look at the other most heavily regulated market, healthcare, and say it works "perfectly fine". > The article goes through the calculations, it shows that even with deregulation LWRs would not be competitive. The numbers given in the article of $53/MWh are currently less than half the current UK wholesale electricity price and renewables impose increasing costs as they become a larger share of your electricity mix (renewables are not even remotely competitive if you also had to pay for even a single day of electricity storage, which would cost at least $4000/kw[1]). Deregulated nuclear would be much cheaper than wind&solar+storage. [1] https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2019/07/f65/Storage%20Cost%20and%20Performance%20Characterization%20Report_Final.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2019/07/f65/Stora...

prawn 4y ago

I think they're suggesting that industry motivated by profits will out-lobby environmentalists and anyone else. I've seen it suggested that the anti-nuclear message was propped up by the coal industry who saw it as a direct threat. Environmentalists have made minimal headway against Murdoch media here in Australia, struggled to make progress against coal/mining, etc. Industrial lobbyists have far more money and power.