4 ms·

> all this is misdirection from the real challenges of nuclear, which is finding somebody who can build it and somebody who is willing to take the financial ris

> all this is misdirection from the real challenges of nuclear, which is finding somebody who can build it and somebody who is willing to take the financial risk of nuclear, when it looks like a terribles mis allocation of capital, if one's goal is to decarbonize energy. I have read that there is much more nuance in nuclear pricing. Past projects were bespoke and subject to changing bureaucratic requirements. There are numerous startups working to bring down cost. https://news.mit.edu/2020/reasons-nuclear-overruns-1118 https://news.mit.edu/2020/reasons-nuclear-overruns-1118 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_plants#Recent_trends https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla...

epistasis 4y ago
Yes, SMRs are the hope, but it's just a hope. It's the right idea to switch away from construction to manufacturing, but it's unclear how quickly the manufacturing process could scale.
- adastra22 4y ago
  With the approval of a SMR design, isn’t this no longer just hope?
  - epistasis 4y ago
    For someone like me, who believes the problem is not regulatory approval but the difficulty and cost of the build, I'm no more hopeful than pre-approval. But I have never questioned whether a good design could be conceived and approved. But if someone thinks that construction/manufacturing is easy and the difficult part is regulatory approval, then perhaps this is cause for hope! The renewable industry has been scaling at levels that are fairly hard to imagine, and yet people continually doubt its ability to scale fast enough to meet the challenge of the energy transition. SMRs are unfortunately decades behind and haven't even gotten a single device manufactured. So I think there are serious questions about how quickly SMRs could scale up to a GW/year, or 10GW/year, or the TW/year that we really need.
    - adastra22 4y ago
      This is a design that is meant to be mass produced in an assembly line factory, then shipped to its destination and plugged into the grid. It definitely had the potential for economies of scale in manufacturing.
      - epistasis 4y ago
        Maybe? It all depends on execution and costs. And that's where most nuclear firms and proponents have been wearing rose-colored glasses for decades. The preliminary estimates of numbers for cost were not terribly impressive, so I hope that they became wise and are under-promising. But only time will tell.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Man if only we invested some real money into that or at least not have regulation that make it almost absurdly hard to work on the technology. And we could have done that 40 years ago.

epistasis 4y ago

Yes, SMRs are the hope, but it's just a hope. It's the right idea to switch away from construction to manufacturing, but it's unclear how quickly the manufacturing process could scale.

adastra22 4y ago
With the approval of a SMR design, isn’t this no longer just hope?
- epistasis 4y ago
  For someone like me, who believes the problem is not regulatory approval but the difficulty and cost of the build, I'm no more hopeful than pre-approval. But I have never questioned whether a good design could be conceived and approved. But if someone thinks that construction/manufacturing is easy and the difficult part is regulatory approval, then perhaps this is cause for hope! The renewable industry has been scaling at levels that are fairly hard to imagine, and yet people continually doubt its ability to scale fast enough to meet the challenge of the energy transition. SMRs are unfortunately decades behind and haven't even gotten a single device manufactured. So I think there are serious questions about how quickly SMRs could scale up to a GW/year, or 10GW/year, or the TW/year that we really need.
  - adastra22 4y ago
    This is a design that is meant to be mass produced in an assembly line factory, then shipped to its destination and plugged into the grid. It definitely had the potential for economies of scale in manufacturing.
    - epistasis 4y ago
      Maybe? It all depends on execution and costs. And that's where most nuclear firms and proponents have been wearing rose-colored glasses for decades. The preliminary estimates of numbers for cost were not terribly impressive, so I hope that they became wise and are under-promising. But only time will tell.
panick21_ 4y ago
Man if only we invested some real money into that or at least not have regulation that make it almost absurdly hard to work on the technology. And we could have done that 40 years ago.