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> Imagine a world where economies of scale bring nuclear power down to the cost of fuel and maintenance. Economies of scale were applied from the inception of

> Imagine a world where economies of scale bring nuclear power down to the cost of fuel and maintenance. Economies of scale were applied from the inception of commercial nuclear power, yet the promise of electricity too cheap to meter has never materialized. Quite the opposite. In fact, nuclear has always been the most expensive method of generating electricity, and the anti-nukes don't enter into it. Even if every individual on the planet was pro-nuke, it would still be too expensive. If it was otherwise, nothing whatsoever could prevent investors from coming out of the woodwork to fulfill your dream of nuclear power plants everywhere. Make nuclear energy economical and you can have all the nuclear power plants you want, as well as being absurdly wealthy. But when you fail, try to avoid blaming anything other than nuclear energy itself.

Paradigma11 4y ago
The most expensive energy is wind and solar after a few weeks of low wind in a cloudy winter.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Fortunately, that very rarely happens, so backing it up with gas turbine plants (burning hydrogen, ultimately) is cheaper than dealing with the 365/24/7 high cost of nuclear.
  - Paradigma11 4y ago
    Nice, i would have guessed that duplicating the production infrastructure and the added loss of hydrogen transformation would be more problematic. Do you have any actual numbers at hand? "...is cheaper..." is a bit vague.
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      I'll point to the simulation site I always link to: https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/ This uses real weather data for various countries and optimize solar + wind + batteries + hydrogen to provide a constant output at minimum cost. The results are interesting. You can tweak the cost assumptions.
nojvek 4y ago
Do you have source for nuclear energy is “too expensive”?
- baix777 4y ago
  Nuclear needs subsidies due to a long history of large cost overruns and other issues. https://energypost.eu/how-profitable-is-an-investment-in-nuclear-power https://energypost.eu/how-profitable-is-an-investment-in-nuc... And France, with many Nuclear plants, has recently had issues keeping the plants up. Many of the most problematic plants are newer ones. https://www.ans.org/news/article-3939/frances-energy-woes-worsened-by-inspectionrelated-nuclear-power-plant-shutdowns/ https://www.ans.org/news/article-3939/frances-energy-woes-wo... The reality is economies of scale have kicked in for solar and wind energy in a way they never can for nuclear. We are at the point where it makes sense, at times, to overprovision renewals to ensure enough supply. The issue with renewables is storage, of course. But that problem looks to be more solvable than cost effective nuclear, a problem which we have not solved in over 50 years. One can say if we were only smarter we could make nuclear more cost effective, which is probably true. But we built a nuclear power plant where a tsunami occurred in the past, only to find it occurred again, so we aren't that smart. The issue with nuclear is everything has to be right for it to be cost effective and safe, and nuclear is too complex for humans to consistently do this. Safe nuclear power that is also cost effective is not a problem we have solved.
  - okr 4y ago
    Never say never. And about solvable storage: right now it is not solved. So it makes sense to go nuclear (again).
    - kelseyfrog 4y ago
      What are even the yardsticks by which nuclear storage success is even measured? /gen
    - VintageCool 4y ago
      There was scarcely any financial incentive to address the grid scale energy storage problem until like two or three years ago. There are a half dozen startups working on it now. My vote is to rapidly install renewables while we have the natural gas backstop, and give the storage startups a few years to make it happen. Energy Dome, Hydrostor, and Form Energy all look promising. And if new nuclear turns out to be less expensive than expected, great.
Godel_unicode 4y ago
None of this is true in Japan, you might want to read up about the cost scaling that’s happened there. The short version is, you need to have enough generations of reactor building to allow later projects to benefit from previous learnings. Because of various outside effects (this is a euphemism for the anti-nuke lobby) that type of iterative improvement and workforce skilling didn’t happen in other countries.
- worik 4y ago
  - tragictrash 4y ago
    You shouldn't leave it there, because that accident has nothing to do with cost scaling. Why don't you leave the thinking for the ones better at it.
    - worik 4y ago
      > You shouldn't leave it there, because that accident has nothing to do with cost scaling. The accident, that single accident on its own, probably doubled the cost of nuclear power to Japan. It is hard to tell because the costs have not all been paid and are mounting still. This is the Achilles heal of nuclear power, that the boosters want us to ignore: The risk of catastrophic failure. One reactor can be looked after carefully (not economically - others have pointed out here the eye watering costs) and safely. But lots of reactors? No. We will keep have catastrophic failures until we stop.
      - shakna 4y ago
        > But lots of reactors? No. We will keep have catastrophic failures until we stop. The military have fielded many reactors for a considerable amount of time. We've got a bit over fifty years of fielding nuclear reactors in submarines. Where are all the inevitable disasters, if that is the case?
kortilla 4y ago
Nuclear never achieved economies of scale because of the anti nuclear crowd. The cumulative number of nuclear power plants built is a drop in the bucket compared to coal and gas plants.
- epistasis 4y ago
  I'm not sure how the anti-nuclear crowd stopped that. There was a general mismanagement and misestimstion of how much nuclear was needed. And then there was a massive amount of construction mismanagement. Even in France, which has a very supportive population, and is usually heralded as a nuclear success story, saw increasing costs rather than decreasing costs as they build more of the same reactor model. Construction productivity doesn't increase like manufacturing productivity does. Nuclear's failures are, as far as I can tell, entirely the responsibility of those tasked with building it. And it's quite possible that nuclear only makes sense at a certain level of economic development, with the right level of technology, but not too much technological development such that manufacturing has completely eclipsed construction. Go to any investor that would build nuclear, and they won't cite public opposition as the reason not to build, they will cite the construction risk. And that's why this SMR design is being tried rather than large reactors.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    Hail Mary Reactors are being tried because they're nuclear's last chance.
  - pyrale 4y ago
    > Even in France, which has a very supportive population, and is usually heralded as a nuclear success story, saw increasing costs rather than decreasing costs as they build more of the same reactor model. I'd be curious to learn where you got your data for this, because I have never been able to find such data. Best I could get was average cost of a plant in a "pallier". What I can provide is building duration, which definitely goes down as more of the same model are built, but there's no guarantee that building duration and cost are equal here.
karaterobot 4y ago
This is an article about nuclear plants starting to be produced at scale.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Veedrac 4y ago
Nuclear is uneconomical because safe, economical nuclear is illegal. That's it. If everyone were pro-nuclear, those laws wouldn't exist (or would exist in a sane form), and nuclear would be cheap.
titzer 4y ago
> In fact, nuclear has always been the most expensive method of generating electricity Just wonder if we're pricing in those externalities from coal, like hundreds of thousands of deaths per year due to air pollution and the fact that it is completely fucking up the atmosphere, leading to a global catastrophe. Because...we're not.
- Gwypaas 4y ago
  Great that the alternative is renewables then!
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Including air pollution externalities, nuclear is definately cheaper. Some of the costs/risks with nuclear are a bit black swannish though which complicates matters. Energy efficiency, pollution controls and carbon taxes are the real magical tech we've not exploited. Because cheaper in the long run means more expensive right now, which is a vulnerable political soft spot that psycopaths can easily exploit.

Paradigma11 4y ago

The most expensive energy is wind and solar after a few weeks of low wind in a cloudy winter.

pfdietz 4y ago
Fortunately, that very rarely happens, so backing it up with gas turbine plants (burning hydrogen, ultimately) is cheaper than dealing with the 365/24/7 high cost of nuclear.
- Paradigma11 4y ago
  Nice, i would have guessed that duplicating the production infrastructure and the added loss of hydrogen transformation would be more problematic. Do you have any actual numbers at hand? "...is cheaper..." is a bit vague.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    I'll point to the simulation site I always link to: https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/ This uses real weather data for various countries and optimize solar + wind + batteries + hydrogen to provide a constant output at minimum cost. The results are interesting. You can tweak the cost assumptions.

nojvek 4y ago

Do you have source for nuclear energy is “too expensive”?

baix777 4y ago
Nuclear needs subsidies due to a long history of large cost overruns and other issues. https://energypost.eu/how-profitable-is-an-investment-in-nuclear-power https://energypost.eu/how-profitable-is-an-investment-in-nuc... And France, with many Nuclear plants, has recently had issues keeping the plants up. Many of the most problematic plants are newer ones. https://www.ans.org/news/article-3939/frances-energy-woes-worsened-by-inspectionrelated-nuclear-power-plant-shutdowns/ https://www.ans.org/news/article-3939/frances-energy-woes-wo... The reality is economies of scale have kicked in for solar and wind energy in a way they never can for nuclear. We are at the point where it makes sense, at times, to overprovision renewals to ensure enough supply. The issue with renewables is storage, of course. But that problem looks to be more solvable than cost effective nuclear, a problem which we have not solved in over 50 years. One can say if we were only smarter we could make nuclear more cost effective, which is probably true. But we built a nuclear power plant where a tsunami occurred in the past, only to find it occurred again, so we aren't that smart. The issue with nuclear is everything has to be right for it to be cost effective and safe, and nuclear is too complex for humans to consistently do this. Safe nuclear power that is also cost effective is not a problem we have solved.
- okr 4y ago
  Never say never. And about solvable storage: right now it is not solved. So it makes sense to go nuclear (again).
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    What are even the yardsticks by which nuclear storage success is even measured? /gen
  - VintageCool 4y ago
    There was scarcely any financial incentive to address the grid scale energy storage problem until like two or three years ago. There are a half dozen startups working on it now. My vote is to rapidly install renewables while we have the natural gas backstop, and give the storage startups a few years to make it happen. Energy Dome, Hydrostor, and Form Energy all look promising. And if new nuclear turns out to be less expensive than expected, great.

Godel_unicode 4y ago

None of this is true in Japan, you might want to read up about the cost scaling that’s happened there. The short version is, you need to have enough generations of reactor building to allow later projects to benefit from previous learnings. Because of various outside effects (this is a euphemism for the anti-nuke lobby) that type of iterative improvement and workforce skilling didn’t happen in other countries.

worik 4y ago
- tragictrash 4y ago
  You shouldn't leave it there, because that accident has nothing to do with cost scaling. Why don't you leave the thinking for the ones better at it.
  - worik 4y ago
    > You shouldn't leave it there, because that accident has nothing to do with cost scaling. The accident, that single accident on its own, probably doubled the cost of nuclear power to Japan. It is hard to tell because the costs have not all been paid and are mounting still. This is the Achilles heal of nuclear power, that the boosters want us to ignore: The risk of catastrophic failure. One reactor can be looked after carefully (not economically - others have pointed out here the eye watering costs) and safely. But lots of reactors? No. We will keep have catastrophic failures until we stop.
    - shakna 4y ago
      > But lots of reactors? No. We will keep have catastrophic failures until we stop. The military have fielded many reactors for a considerable amount of time. We've got a bit over fifty years of fielding nuclear reactors in submarines. Where are all the inevitable disasters, if that is the case?

kortilla 4y ago

Nuclear never achieved economies of scale because of the anti nuclear crowd. The cumulative number of nuclear power plants built is a drop in the bucket compared to coal and gas plants.

epistasis 4y ago
I'm not sure how the anti-nuclear crowd stopped that. There was a general mismanagement and misestimstion of how much nuclear was needed. And then there was a massive amount of construction mismanagement. Even in France, which has a very supportive population, and is usually heralded as a nuclear success story, saw increasing costs rather than decreasing costs as they build more of the same reactor model. Construction productivity doesn't increase like manufacturing productivity does. Nuclear's failures are, as far as I can tell, entirely the responsibility of those tasked with building it. And it's quite possible that nuclear only makes sense at a certain level of economic development, with the right level of technology, but not too much technological development such that manufacturing has completely eclipsed construction. Go to any investor that would build nuclear, and they won't cite public opposition as the reason not to build, they will cite the construction risk. And that's why this SMR design is being tried rather than large reactors.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Hail Mary Reactors are being tried because they're nuclear's last chance.
- pyrale 4y ago
  > Even in France, which has a very supportive population, and is usually heralded as a nuclear success story, saw increasing costs rather than decreasing costs as they build more of the same reactor model. I'd be curious to learn where you got your data for this, because I have never been able to find such data. Best I could get was average cost of a plant in a "pallier". What I can provide is building duration, which definitely goes down as more of the same model are built, but there's no guarantee that building duration and cost are equal here.

karaterobot 4y ago

This is an article about nuclear plants starting to be produced at scale.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Veedrac 4y ago

Nuclear is uneconomical because safe, economical nuclear is illegal. That's it. If everyone were pro-nuclear, those laws wouldn't exist (or would exist in a sane form), and nuclear would be cheap.

titzer 4y ago

> In fact, nuclear has always been the most expensive method of generating electricity Just wonder if we're pricing in those externalities from coal, like hundreds of thousands of deaths per year due to air pollution and the fact that it is completely fucking up the atmosphere, leading to a global catastrophe. Because...we're not.

Gwypaas 4y ago
Great that the alternative is renewables then!
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Including air pollution externalities, nuclear is definately cheaper. Some of the costs/risks with nuclear are a bit black swannish though which complicates matters. Energy efficiency, pollution controls and carbon taxes are the real magical tech we've not exploited. Because cheaper in the long run means more expensive right now, which is a vulnerable political soft spot that psycopaths can easily exploit.