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Here's the real reason nuclear power did not succeed in the US (I can't speak of other countries). It was opposed by the Democrats, and the Republicans, althoug

Here's the real reason nuclear power did not succeed in the US (I can't speak of other countries). It was opposed by the Democrats, and the Republicans, although some in favor of it, decided they don't want to spend whatever political capital they had on this. Now both Democrats and Republicans are pro nuclear power. You may not like it, but nuclear power is having a comeback.

epistasis 4y ago
The last time to start nuclear to address climate change was the mid-2000s. And we did start four reactors, with many more planned! However they are all construction failures, and the two at Summer were actually even abandoned half completed, it was so bad. And executives our going to jail for their lies during the construction process. That's what I mean when I say nobody knows how to build it. We will likely never attempt another new 1GW reactor in our lifetimes, because even is some brave EPC firm thinks they could tackle the challenges, getting the money for that is nearly impossible. Oh, did I mention that the only reason the four reactors were attempted at all in the mid-2000s is that the two utilities captured state legislatures and changed the law so that they could charge rate payers whether or not construction completed? Utilities memory of stopping nuclear in the 80s isn't because of protestors, it because of bankruptcy. In any case, the only hope for nuclear is SMRs from new startups. But we can't depend on them because we don't know the costs. Fortunately nuclear is no longer our only hope, and we have other options that we didn't have 20 years ago. Politics has nearly nothing to do with stopping nuclear. It all came down to construction mucking it up.
- credit_guy 4y ago
  > and we have other options that we didn't have 20 years ago. We do, but those options are not enough. If they were, the Democrats in Washington would not have turned pro-nuclear. They saw the numbers. You can store electricity from day to night, but not from Summer to Winter. Months-long electricity storage will never make economic sense (or at least not in the next 30 years). Nuclear reactor construction is currently a decades-long affair. Can we make it shorter? Here's a little historical tidbit: in WW2, when the Liberty ships started being built, it took the first such ships about 250 days to be built. They took down that number to 150, then to 105, then to 71, then to 30 and then to 10. They even built one in less than 5 days, and that one did survive the war, and kept working until 1963. The secret was to build large components separately, each on its own assembly line, and then to just snap them together as a giant Lego toy. The fact that current nuclear reactors take 20 years to build is not a mathematical proof that any design will take as long. It is entirely possible for SMRs to be build in a matter of months, maybe, just like the Liberty ships, in a matter of days. If the politicians in Washington want to make that happen, then the engineers can make it happen.
  - kitkat_new 4y ago
    > They saw the numbers. You can store electricity from day to night, but not from Summer to Winter. Months-long electricity storage will never make economic sense (or at least not in the next 30 years). where's your crystal ball?
    - credit_guy 4y ago
      It's just math. If you have a storage solution where you can recoup you capital costs by charging every day and selling electricity every night, you will recoup only one hundredth of that if you charge one day and sell 100 days later. Currently the capital costs of batteries add a few cents to the kWh (the average price of 1 kWh in the US in 2021 was 14 cents). If you multiply that number by one hundred, you end up with dollars for kWh, and you can sell that kWh, because nobody will buy it. If you find a storage solution that adds only hundredths of cents to a kWh if sold daily, that would be absolutely fantastic. But no such solution is in sight. The only long term storage solution that has a shadow of a chance to make it is hydrogen. But we are so, so much behind the plan in building green hydrogen production facilities. As for hydrogen liquefaction and shipping, that's just a distant plan.
      - tcfhgj 4y ago
        Logical fallacy: Every storage technology is scaled up/down linearly in terms of cost from a daily to monthly or even higher cycle Another thing: Demand based power consumption
        p1mrx 4y ago
        "Demand based consumption" is a fancy way to say shortage.
        tcfhgj 4y ago
        No, its not
    - 4y ago
- AinderS 4y ago
  > That's what I mean when I say nobody knows how to build it. During China's 13th Five-Year Plan period from 2016 to 2020, the country built 20 new nuclear power generators with a total capacity of 23.44 million kilowatts - https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-04-14/China-has-most-nuclear-power-plants-in-progress-industry-report-ZsG8IKrRzG/index.html https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-04-14/China-has-most-nuclear... So clearly it's possible. With the right policy incentives, there's no reason to believe the US can't replicate China's success in this area.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    There's plenty of reason to believe that we can't replicate those numbers, because we have vastly different labor costs, vastly different technological skill sets. Plus, costs in China are always a bit of a mystery. Russia or South Korea may also provide potential routes towards cheaper construction, but South Korea's success was based on at least a bit of corruption. And who knows what's actually going on at Rosatom. I would also point out that China's only planning something like 50GW of new reactors from here on out, but nearly TW of renewables, so new nuclear there is mostly coming from hedging their primary bets, not as a primary source of future electricity. The US definitely does need to relearn how to do big construction projects. But I think that the limited construction capacity we have would be best spent on projects that have no replacement, like mass transit. Or on building factories to produce energy generating widgets, which has an exponential return on construction effort when compared to constructing energy generating widgets directly.

epistasis 4y ago

The last time to start nuclear to address climate change was the mid-2000s. And we did start four reactors, with many more planned! However they are all construction failures, and the two at Summer were actually even abandoned half completed, it was so bad. And executives our going to jail for their lies during the construction process. That's what I mean when I say nobody knows how to build it. We will likely never attempt another new 1GW reactor in our lifetimes, because even is some brave EPC firm thinks they could tackle the challenges, getting the money for that is nearly impossible. Oh, did I mention that the only reason the four reactors were attempted at all in the mid-2000s is that the two utilities captured state legislatures and changed the law so that they could charge rate payers whether or not construction completed? Utilities memory of stopping nuclear in the 80s isn't because of protestors, it because of bankruptcy. In any case, the only hope for nuclear is SMRs from new startups. But we can't depend on them because we don't know the costs. Fortunately nuclear is no longer our only hope, and we have other options that we didn't have 20 years ago. Politics has nearly nothing to do with stopping nuclear. It all came down to construction mucking it up.

credit_guy 4y ago
> and we have other options that we didn't have 20 years ago. We do, but those options are not enough. If they were, the Democrats in Washington would not have turned pro-nuclear. They saw the numbers. You can store electricity from day to night, but not from Summer to Winter. Months-long electricity storage will never make economic sense (or at least not in the next 30 years). Nuclear reactor construction is currently a decades-long affair. Can we make it shorter? Here's a little historical tidbit: in WW2, when the Liberty ships started being built, it took the first such ships about 250 days to be built. They took down that number to 150, then to 105, then to 71, then to 30 and then to 10. They even built one in less than 5 days, and that one did survive the war, and kept working until 1963. The secret was to build large components separately, each on its own assembly line, and then to just snap them together as a giant Lego toy. The fact that current nuclear reactors take 20 years to build is not a mathematical proof that any design will take as long. It is entirely possible for SMRs to be build in a matter of months, maybe, just like the Liberty ships, in a matter of days. If the politicians in Washington want to make that happen, then the engineers can make it happen.
- kitkat_new 4y ago
  > They saw the numbers. You can store electricity from day to night, but not from Summer to Winter. Months-long electricity storage will never make economic sense (or at least not in the next 30 years). where's your crystal ball?
  - credit_guy 4y ago
    It's just math. If you have a storage solution where you can recoup you capital costs by charging every day and selling electricity every night, you will recoup only one hundredth of that if you charge one day and sell 100 days later. Currently the capital costs of batteries add a few cents to the kWh (the average price of 1 kWh in the US in 2021 was 14 cents). If you multiply that number by one hundred, you end up with dollars for kWh, and you can sell that kWh, because nobody will buy it. If you find a storage solution that adds only hundredths of cents to a kWh if sold daily, that would be absolutely fantastic. But no such solution is in sight. The only long term storage solution that has a shadow of a chance to make it is hydrogen. But we are so, so much behind the plan in building green hydrogen production facilities. As for hydrogen liquefaction and shipping, that's just a distant plan.
    - tcfhgj 4y ago
      Logical fallacy: Every storage technology is scaled up/down linearly in terms of cost from a daily to monthly or even higher cycle Another thing: Demand based power consumption
      - p1mrx 4y ago
        "Demand based consumption" is a fancy way to say shortage.
        tcfhgj 4y ago
        No, its not
  - 4y ago
AinderS 4y ago
> That's what I mean when I say nobody knows how to build it. During China's 13th Five-Year Plan period from 2016 to 2020, the country built 20 new nuclear power generators with a total capacity of 23.44 million kilowatts - https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-04-14/China-has-most-nuclear-power-plants-in-progress-industry-report-ZsG8IKrRzG/index.html https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-04-14/China-has-most-nuclear... So clearly it's possible. With the right policy incentives, there's no reason to believe the US can't replicate China's success in this area.
- epistasis 4y ago
  There's plenty of reason to believe that we can't replicate those numbers, because we have vastly different labor costs, vastly different technological skill sets. Plus, costs in China are always a bit of a mystery. Russia or South Korea may also provide potential routes towards cheaper construction, but South Korea's success was based on at least a bit of corruption. And who knows what's actually going on at Rosatom. I would also point out that China's only planning something like 50GW of new reactors from here on out, but nearly TW of renewables, so new nuclear there is mostly coming from hedging their primary bets, not as a primary source of future electricity. The US definitely does need to relearn how to do big construction projects. But I think that the limited construction capacity we have would be best spent on projects that have no replacement, like mass transit. Or on building factories to produce energy generating widgets, which has an exponential return on construction effort when compared to constructing energy generating widgets directly.