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There is this idea that nuclear is not being deployed because people have a wrong perception of risks. However, the main reason is the economy. The costs of so

by joak 4y ago

There is this idea that nuclear is not being deployed because people have a wrong perception of risks. However, the main reason is the economy. The costs of solar, wind and batteries are dropping exponentially but the costs of nuclear are not improving. We can blame regulation and the hypothetically wrong public perception about safety, but the reality is that costs cannot go down easily because of the innovation dynamics: 1. It takes several years to build a nuclear reactor. Hence, innovations take a decade to reach the market. Learning curve has to be slow. 2. A nuclear reactor cannot be shipped, it has to be build on site. This makes manufacturing automation, economies of scale and competition hard. In other words: you cannot have factories in China, or elsewhere, shipping cheap nuclear reactors all over the planet. A change in regulation might lower the costs, but it's not going to improve much the innovation dynamics. In conclusion, all this talking is mostly irrelevant: nuclear reactors are simply not going to be built because they are not competitive. And things are getting worse by the day because the alternatives have a better innovation cycle.

m2fkxy 4y ago
> In conclusion, (...) nuclear reactors are simply not going to be built because they are not competitive What do you mean? 50+ reactors are under construction as we write [1], and almost twice as much are planned [2] (with even more proposed). Furthermore: > A nuclear reactor cannot be shipped Marine nuclear reactors (of which 200-ish are in active service) and Chukotka's floating nuclear power plants are notable counter-examples. Especially with marine reactors being the baseline for the philosophy behind SMRs. [1] https://pris.iaea.org/pris/worldstatistics/underconstructionreactorsbycountry.aspx https://pris.iaea.org/pris/worldstatistics/underconstruction... [2] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu...
- rattray 4y ago
  Can you share sources? I'm surprised that so many reactors are being built.
  - m2fkxy 4y ago
    Yes, sorry for not having done so. Edited my comment. On reactors under construction, IAEA's PRIS database. https://pris.iaea.org/pris/worldstatistics/underconstructionreactorsbycountry.aspx https://pris.iaea.org/pris/worldstatistics/underconstruction... On planned reactors, World Nuclear Association. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu... EDIT: wrong link for IAEA's db.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    What matters is how many will be completed, not cancelled. That number is rather smaller.
- otherme123 4y ago
  That table doesn't support your thesis, specially when you think of the one reactor being built in France. Something being built means little when the time from "start" and "end" is meassured in decades. A better table would be "increase in nuclear output". E.g. fully self driving vehicles are being built, but little or none see the street, much less have a positive ROI. Planned and proposed is even worse. A lot of them would never leave that status. Only energy super eager countries like China or India are effectively increasing nuclear capacity, and in a way that nobody knows if they are financially sound investments.
  - modo_mario 4y ago
    >Something being built means little when the time from "start" and "end" is meassured in decades. If you'd go to check for the average build time of a nuclear reactor or the new reactors that come into service you'd notice they're often/typically connected and running 5-6 years after they start building. A lot of that is helped by china and the likes not having horror stories like Finland.
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      It's also helped by China starting the construction clock after concrete and steel are already in the ground. You can get good numbers by cheating.
- locallost 4y ago
  The capacity of plants built now is about the same as it's being retired. This will only accelerate in the future as old plants get more and more decommissioned. I'm comparison there is almost 300GW of capacity in renewables added every year. All nuclear capacity being built now for the next decades is less than what's added in renewables every year, and that's even considering the capacity factor. So they are not being built in any significant way. Percentage of nuclear went down from 20 to 10 percent and it will continue to go down, until it becomes economical or we figure out we can't get renewables to work. I personally wouldn't bet on either of those, but that's just my opinion. There is a third option of course that is very realistic, and that is that the nuclear lobby buys itself a business model through FUD and other means. Currently they realistically don't have one.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    If renewables can't do it, they can at least reach a state where the residual demand is utterly unsuitable to nuclear. If renewables are maxed out there will be long periods where they are supplying all demand; the residue has zero base load.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Plants planned or under construction will be cancelled anywhere they are not massively subsidized by government coercion of tax- or ratepayers, as energy prices continue downward. They will be recognized as unable to compete. Existing plants will be mothballed as energy prices drop below the level needed to continue operating, again except where coerced.
  - ETH_start 4y ago
    Nuclear power is the cheapest option: https://www.oecd-nea.org/lcoe/ https://www.oecd-nea.org/lcoe/ And it is far more reliable than renewables.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      With enough thumbs on the scale, you can support any conclusion. In this case, neglecting all public subsidies and neglecting CAPEX. It is furthermore a snapshot. Policy for construction needs to consider the future, and renewables cost is still falling fast.
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      That's for "LTO": extending the lifespan of existing nuclear plants. The cost of power from new construction nuclear would be much higher.
      - ETH_start 4y ago
        The LTO is the estimated lifespan of the plant. The LTOs provided in that chart are well below the real lifespan of these plants. The capital cost of building the plants is also provided in the chart. That means this accounts for "the cost of power from new construction nuclear" you refer to.
        pfdietz 4y ago
        LTO is referring to refurbishment efforts to extend the lifespan of an existing plant. Look at the first line in that chart. It's for 20 years of operation of a 1000 MW reactor. The capital cost is listed as $5.93/MWh. If that reactor is operating at 90% capacity factor for 20 years, the total capital cost comes in at less than $1B. That cannot possibly be the cost of building a new nuclear plant. Instead, it's the capital cost of the refurbishment needed to allow an existing reactor to operate for another 20 years. This can surely be a nice way to get more from many existing NPPs (although some of these refurbishment efforts have gone disastrously wrong; see Crystal River 3 in Florida for example), but it has little relevance to the cost of building a new NPP.
brutusborn 4y ago
Do you have any sources for utility scale batteries with reasonable cost? The biggest I know of are in Australia and are extremely expensive, and provide such little reserve they are basically a rounding error.
- MisterMower 4y ago
  Not to mention they employ batteries fabricated with toxic chemicals. It’s going to be tragic watching folks try to figure out how to safely dispose of these batteries 20 years from now. Not to mention the carbon that will be emitted to make them in the first place.
  - nl 4y ago
    Lithium Ion batteries are recyclable and the fact that not many are yet is mostly because of infrastructure rather than any technical issue: https://cen.acs.org/materials/energy-storage/time-serious-recycling-lithium/97/i28 https://cen.acs.org/materials/energy-storage/time-serious-re... This has improved since 2019 (when that article was written) and now all Tesla batteries are recycled[1][2]. [1] https://www.tesla.com/en_AU/support/sustainability-recycling https://www.tesla.com/en_AU/support/sustainability-recycling [2] https://electrek.co/2022/05/09/tesla-increase-battery-recycling-capacity-battery-packs/ https://electrek.co/2022/05/09/tesla-increase-battery-recycl...
    - brutusborn 4y ago
      Neometals im Australia also have leading edge recyling tech, at least leading Western companies.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Concern trolling not welcome here.
- tcfhgj 4y ago
  Are you talking about lithium batteries? Why on earth?
ajdude 4y ago
And then even after building the plant your community may turn around and decide they don’t want the plant anymore. Then you’re out €1.4bn e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwentendorf_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwentendorf_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
- kirso 4y ago
  It could have provided for 10% of the demand, cost billions of $ and years to build. Unfortunately the campaign against it and referendum were led by a publication which had conflict of interest in hydropower and used the `scare` tactics for people to perceive the risk in a very extreme way... Morgan Housel talks about this case in his talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9pk3ecuucs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9pk3ecuucs Risk perception ties to the country that you live in, generation you are born and values that are instilled in you based on your surroundings. All this features are outside of your control pretty much but they dictate a lot even in cases like this...
jaredklewis 4y ago
Oil refineries also take years to build and are built on site. The difference is that oil goes onto open markets and it is thus possible for oil refiners to get a return on their investment. We don’t need innovation in nuclear. The nuclear technology we have today is already a miracle technology. Can’t speak to Europe but in the US the issue absolutely is regulation. The exact regulations vary by state, but energy grids are not open markets and the regulations universally disadvantage nuclear and benefit other sources. Safety focused regulations do impose a cost, but the primary issue is that we don’t let nuclear power operators turn a profit.
- afterburner 4y ago
  > We don’t need innovation in nuclear The Nuclear industry will need that innovation, in order to remain even remotely competitive with the alternatives. It's not improving faster than those alternatives though.
  - KennyBlanken 4y ago
    The nuclear industry has had three quarters of a century to be innovative, with enormous public funds pumped into it only because of its defense applications - nuclear weaponry and naval powerplants. At a certain point you have to say "sorry guys, you had your try" and let the existing plants wind down. That's what's happening. Nuclear is being replaced by green generation at 6x the rate it's being lost.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - dron57 4y ago
      Renewable energy is great, but sun and wind are intermittent. Grids cannot base themselves on renewable energy without some sort of impractical battery storage scheme or major advancements in creating renewable Green Hydrogen for fuel cells.
      - 4y ago
afterburner 4y ago
I'm glad this kind of comment is floating to the top of these threads now, instead of the straw man arguments more commonly propagated in the past which consisted of blaming "fear". It's always been $money$. Let's spend the money on the better alternative sources wherever we can. If nothing else, we will see the benefits faster, which is now an even more critical factor than ever as feet have been dragged for decades.
- m2fkxy 4y ago
  What are better solutions for low-carbon, dispatchable, high power electrical energy generation?
  - KennyBlanken 4y ago
    Wind and solar coupled with energy storage systems, all of which have been plunging in price like a rock over the last twenty years.
    - m2fkxy 4y ago
      What large scale energy storage systems are in operation today, or even ready to be rolled out? I quote myself under another of your comment: > Why does Germany performs abysmally wrt. electrical production carbon intensity despite having enough wind/solar installed capacity to cover their consumption?
      - pfdietz 4y ago
        Grid connected batteries are being installed all over the place. And now hydrogen storage is being rolled out too. The hydrogen storage project in Delta, Utah could ultimately (when the salt formation there is fully utilized) store enough hydrogen to supply the entire US average grid power demand for 30 hours. BTW, electrolyzers from China are now being sold to the international market for $0.30/W. Their prices are crashing just like PV did. > Germany Some combination of difficulty of dislodging incumbents whose capital cost is sunk, and political implications from parts of society depending on coal mining. They should have been building more renewables, I agree, and it's too bad for them now that they didn't.
addicted 4y ago
Nuclear projects globally aren’t collapsing because they aren’t “green”. They’ve been collapsing because of the economics despite green subsidies. And where they have succeeded they’re charging customers a lot more money than equivalent solar and wind alternatives have. This is the problem that needs to be solved. And it’s not clear to me how it gets resolved in a much higher cost of borrowing environment than what we’ve had for a decade.
- krupan 4y ago
  Is there really a place where there is equivalent power from solar and/or wind alone?
  - nl 4y ago
    Very many places. Germany: 41% of all power was from renewables in 2021 https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/topics/climate-energy/renewable-energies/renewable-energies-in-figures https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/topics/climate-energy/rene... UK: 43.1% of all power was from renewables in 2020 https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/how-much-uks-energy-renewable https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/how-mu... Australia: 32.5% (2021): https://apo.org.au/node/317318 https://apo.org.au/node/317318 US: 22% expected in 2022: https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/electricity.php https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/electricity.php
    - modo_mario 4y ago
      You're arguing for him. Those places do not go anywhere close to full renewable. Germany being one of your best examples has put out vaaastly more CO2 than let's say France. This because it needs variable output to cover the variable output of it's renewables and as their share of the pie grows so do the costs of providing either storage or variable output. The strategy of our Greens in Belgium too was to build gas plants to cover for when the nuclear reactors were shut down like they always wanted. You may have noticed tho that gas has seen some changes in price and circumstances and a lot of people have started wondering why Greens are so eager to increase CO2 output.
kirso 4y ago
Not sure what do you mean? In many countries nuclear is government subsidised and is the cheapest & cleanest source of energy available compared to say renewables. In fact countries build these because of the price of other alternatives: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-17/czechs-start-7-billion-nuclear-project-as-power-prices-surge https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-17/czechs-st... The caveat is indeed incredibly large CAPEX and very long time, but what is the alternative? At least then you are secured partially for 20-40 years depending on needed capacity. EDIT: typos
- ncmncm 4y ago
  You contradict yourself. If it were cheap, it would not need to be subsidized. Existing nukes will be mothballed as even their opex is uncompetitive. Governments will, in the end, choose to spend their money more wisely than propping up extremely expensive nukes. Buying their neighbors' renewable overproduction will be cheaper. Building out their own, cheaper yet.
tjmc 4y ago
> 2. A nuclear reactor cannot be shipped, it has to be build on site. Does it? This is the premise behind NuScale's modular SMRs. https://www.nuscalepower.com/technology/fabrication-and-assembly https://www.nuscalepower.com/technology/fabrication-and-asse...
- tekknik 4y ago
  They also just got the OK from the NRC: https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/nuscale-smr-approval-nuclear-power https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/nuscale-smr-approval-nucl...
KennyBlanken 4y ago
100% correct. Not only have nuclear costs not improved in the three quarters of a century it has existed, it's only gotten more expensive while wind and solar have plunged, dramatically, in costs. In the US, nuclear capacity is being replaced by wind and solar at six times the rate it's being "lost"; the hysterics you read here on HN and reddit are just that. And the rate of solar and wind deployment is skyrocketing. The people building grids and investing in generation are putting their money into wind and solar, because it's the cheapest and easiest. "Several years" is an understatement; it takes years just to go from "everything is completely constructed and wired and plumbed" to "we are connected to the grid." This happened in Canada, where a reactor at an existing plant was brought back into use. The process took years. You can't just drop a nuke anywhere. In order to be cost-effective, they have to be enormous and run at full capacity as continuously as possible. You can't just drop gigawatts of power generation anywhere you want in the grid,so the grid might have to get reworked or a plant might only be feasible in a handful of geographic locations. The plant needs access to massive quantities of cooling water, and a geologically stable area. They also need to be able to suck down enormous amounts of power, because even when a reactor is shut down and not "generating power", it requires many megawatts of electricity to run all the cooling systems; a reactor takes weeks to stop generating significant amounts of heat. Ditto for startup (this is true of many plants, but especially nuclear.) They take many hours to adjust power levels. That's not what the grid needs; the grid needs highly reactive power, on the scale of seconds to minutes. Pumped hydro has been doing that in the UK for decades, helping the national grid meet the famous grid surge where everyone flips on their electric kettles when the BBC goes to break during a programming. The pumped hydro facilities in the UK and EU can react within seconds to changing grid demand. The US has pumped hydro as well, but battery systems are getting so cheap, they're competitive and don't have the risks hydro dams do. Reactor vessels aren't built on-site. The majority are built by Japan Steel Works, one of the few companies in the world that makes reactor vessels. They have fixed capacity, require very high grade metal, and so on. One cannot just snap fingers, throw money at the problem under a "green" funding bill, and get more reactors. There's also the massive carbon footprint of construction and commissioning, which takes another decade of operation to break even on, if nuclear reactors ever break even. The industry almost completely ignores the carbon impact of mining and refining uranium as well as the carbon footprint of the massive supply chain and workforce it takes to keep a plant running. Meanwhile, solar and wind pay back their carbon footprint in a matter of months to a year or two at most. We need the very fastest ways to reduce carbon generation, and that will only come from conservation, a radical shift in transportation policy (namely discontinuing subsidizing low occupancy vehicle use), and large-scale conversion to electricity as an energy source.
hackerlight 4y ago
> The costs of solar, wind and batteries are dropping exponentially but the costs of nuclear are not improving. So where can I see a cost comparison that factors in the cost of storage? I've probably seen 20 people say this exact same thing and have never been able to find an actual cost breakdown that supports it.
- readams 4y ago
  Nobody knows what storage would cost because there is no technology that currently exists to make storage possible. Battery technology helps a lot to stabilize the grid over seconds to minutes or even hours, but the kind of storage that would be needed to be 100% solar and wind just doesn't exist. Pumped hydro is great but there are not many places where it is feasible. So the reality of the current situation is that solar and wind are cheap now since when they are a relatively small percentage of the power and you can fall back on gas and coal storage isn't really needed. But in the future the costs of solar and wind will skyrocket since you'll need to overbuild the capacity by a huge amount, plus build lots of expensive transmission infrastructure, to work around the fact that storage technology at the appropriate scale doesn't exist yet.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Storage is trivial. It will be built after there is enough renewable generating capacity to charge it from.
    - LorenPechtel 4y ago
      Ask anyone with an off-grid solar installation how trivial it is. Hint: The storage costs more than the power. Considerably more last time I looked at the numbers.
      - ncmncm 4y ago
        Off-grid power has no choice but batteries. Utilities have others.
otherme123 4y ago
And again, the article does the same mistake they always do: attack wind and solar more than fossil or hydro. Instead of selling nuclear as the ideal companion to solar, it's always a sad try to convince us that we are wrong investing in solar and eolic, and the money should be going to more nuclear. My guess is that utilities are not happy with the decentralization of PV. They like fossils, hydro and nuclear because you can't run them in you backyard at competitive prices. But you can buy PV and thermosolar on friday at Home Depot, slap it to the roof, and have a better ROI than any utility starting sunday. Get a Powerball or something similar, and they would never see another dollar from your pocket. They, nuclear lobby, are known to be maneuvering to get more nuclear reactors installed quickly before is too late, but on conditions like: 1) government subsidizes the costs, 2) they assume possible overbudgets, 3) insures the plants for 100 years or so, and 4) guarantee an income for 50 years, in concept of "backup". For that they need a favorable public opinion, begging for more nuclear plants, and the politics would abide.
- ip26 4y ago
  Ironically, to me their best play is to board the renewable train as a base load alternative to storage, which is not yet mature.
  - runarberg 4y ago
    Currently nuclear reactors take well over a decade from construction to start of operation. I think few are willing to bet that storage will still be a problem 10 years from now. Carbon capture from gas natural gas (also an alternative that exists today) is another technology you’d have to bet won’t become economically feasible by the time your nuclear power plant finally becomes operational. Honestly a base-load alternative is not such a strong argument in favor.
    - HyperSane 4y ago
    - modo_mario 4y ago
sva_ 4y ago
Indeed, we should rather put all our hopes in generating energy from a resource that can/will be disrupted by a small volcanic eruption.
mcronce 4y ago
This presupposes that economics are the most important thing. That isn't really the case. It doesn't matter how much money you have when the climate burns to the ground around you, while energy sources that work when they want to fail to provide for your needs.
- aemreunal 4y ago
  This is often the unspoken part but I agree that it's one of, if not the most important aspect for our energy needs. I understand economics can't just be thrown out of the window but I feel like a lot of governments don't see the big picture and invest in these solutions "at a loss" now so we can not have climate catastrophes that make our planet uninhabitable, at least to large chunks of the population.
- cycomanic 4y ago
  It is funny how the same people (the nuclear lobby) who used to argue against solar due to economics (too expensive) are now arguing we should not consider economics anymore. The thing is though, at the moment most countries still produce significant portions of their elecricity from fossils. So if we want to remove them as quickly as possible, we should use the solution that gives us the highest capacity for a fixed amount of money (assuming we have only fixed funds). Moreover because nuclear is so CAPEX driven both in cost and CO2 budget, it takes a long time to become carbon positive. So we would actually increase CO2 in the short term by building nuclear power plants. So the best current strategy is to build up renewables to replace fossil as quick as possible, keep existing nuclear running, and develop storage. If the current trends of the cost for solar and wind continue, we might not even need much storage because building overcapacity is so cheap.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Coal producers love every nuke project: that represents a solid decade more sales, vs. wind or solar that would start displacing coal immediately, several times as much in the end for the same investment, and then radically less opex.
fisherjeff 4y ago
I agree with you completely. However, I do think it’s important to point out that the people complaining about risk perceptions are also right but the effort of correcting those perceptions faces the huge headwind of human psychology. Of course people are going to overweight the outcome and underweight the probability when estimating the EV of something - that’s how we work! That’s why Powerball exists!
nopenopenopeno 4y ago
This is wrong. Nuclear energy is very cheap, green, and reliable. The problem with nuclear is the very large initial investment required, which delays the time to profit. In other words, there is no problem with nuclear energy. The problem is with our economic system that demands short-term profits.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  No nuke started today, or even recently, will ever pay back its CAPEX.
raverbashing 4y ago
While I agree with the issue of costs, nuclear reactors being slow to build and having to be built on site is a technological problem, not a fundamental limitation Why can't we have nuclear sub technology for civilian use?
- ncmncm 4y ago
  If it would have been competitive, it would be there already. It ain't, never was.
shakow 4y ago
> A nuclear reactor cannot be shipped Have you ever heard of nuclear aircraft carriers and submarines?
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Desperate, much?
  - shakow 4y ago
    Am I living in an alternate universe? US, UK, Russia, France have been putting nuke plants in submarines for half a century, most of these countries have done the same with surface ships, be it carriers or ice-breakers, Russia has built nuke plants on barges to provide power for remote areas; heck, the US even ran a nuke plant on a plane, and I am the one being desperate?
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      Yes. Yes, you are. In none of those cases have economic considerations been dispositive, or even of much interest.
      - shakow 4y ago
        That's moving goalposts; of course small-scale production is going to cost an arm and a leg. The original post said it was impossible, not expensive.
        ncmncm 4y ago
        In an open, uncoerced market, anything too expensive does not happen. People opt for cheaper alternatives, or for more value for the same money. Or, somewhere in between.
        shakow 4y ago
        Of course, and naturally, first-of-a-kind are bloody expensive. Maybe there's a way to make small nuke plants economical, maybe there's not, I dont' know. But it's definitely not ‶impossible″ to humankind.
belorn 4y ago
> A nuclear reactor cannot be shipped. There does exist an exception to this. Russia built a floating nuclear power plant. There is a lot of controversy around it. However the main claim that economy is the center of the argument is true. Fossil fuels are exceptional cheap as a battery solution to be combined with solar and wind, especially wind which don't have 365 days of charge cycles. Natural gas in Europe play the central role of filling in when wind/solar production goes down, with oil and coal coming in next. Since fossil fuels aren't burned all the time, a much higher cost per kw/h is tolerated, even when the spot price reaches upwards to 10x higher than the average cost. This winter they are expecting prices to exceed that by twice or more, and the average this year is already looking to be twice of last year. The economics right now is a bit funky. Nuclear has most of their cost attached to the constructions, so with energy prices being almost doubled compared to last year, nuclear is looking quite economical. If inflation continues as it has been then a nuclear plant built 30 years will start to look really cheap compared to a wind + gas turbine. The biggest winners in term of profit however are the gas power plant owners, seeing record profits as a result of being able to charge record prices.
- tekknik 4y ago
  > Russia built a floating nuclear power plant. There is a lot of controversy around it. There are many floating reactors, they’re called aircraft carriers and warships. At any rate, an actual shippable reactor is available and the first will be built in 2029: https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/nuscale-smr-approval-nuclear-power https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/nuscale-smr-approval-nucl...
mbar84 4y ago
Let the market decide. You may be right and I wish you well if you're basing investment decisions on your projections. It does not seem plausible to me that nuclear would be uncompetitive on a free market. There are cost curves and economies of scale that may not be visible due to the regulatory burden and regulatory uncertainty.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Nukes have never been competitive. Every last nuke ever built depended utterly on subsidy coerced from taxpayers or ratepayers.
  - mbar84 4y ago
    Then so be it, that's perfectly fine. I'm the last to say people should throw their money out the window when there are better options around.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
panick21_ 4y ago
> However, the main reason is the economy. Yes but the economy is not free of consideration of these other factors. > The costs of solar, wind and batteries are dropping exponentially They are no longer dropping exponentially and insofar they do its because of mass production. Something not unique to renewable. If all world governments had invested the same in nuclear we could see the same kind of price reductions. > 2. A nuclear reactor cannot be shipped, it has to be build on site. This is not universally true. Some reactors can be ships and others can be shipped in a small number of parts. > A change in regulation might lower the costs, but it's not going to improve much the innovation dynamics. You are missing how good current regulation are at destroying innovation. Its literally impossible to build an small example reactor to do research. Its basically either is a very tiny university research reactor, or alternatively you need a full operational license but guess what, currently in the US its not even remotely possible to get an operational license for a non-PWR. So why would anybody even do research? This is beyond a whole bunch of other issues with nuclear regulation. > In conclusion, all this talking is mostly irrelevant: nuclear reactors are simply not going to be built because they are not competitive. So in conclusion, we destroyed the nuclear industry and nuclear research for the most part and they are not competitive, therefore lets never do anything to fix that. Yes, nuclear innovation cycle will always be slower, but the same can be said for trains, or many other things that are very useful.

by joak 4y ago

m2fkxy 4y ago

> In conclusion, (...) nuclear reactors are simply not going to be built because they are not competitive What do you mean? 50+ reactors are under construction as we write [1], and almost twice as much are planned [2] (with even more proposed). Furthermore: > A nuclear reactor cannot be shipped Marine nuclear reactors (of which 200-ish are in active service) and Chukotka's floating nuclear power plants are notable counter-examples. Especially with marine reactors being the baseline for the philosophy behind SMRs. [1] https://pris.iaea.org/pris/worldstatistics/underconstructionreactorsbycountry.aspx https://pris.iaea.org/pris/worldstatistics/underconstruction... [2] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu...

rattray 4y ago
Can you share sources? I'm surprised that so many reactors are being built.
- m2fkxy 4y ago
  Yes, sorry for not having done so. Edited my comment. On reactors under construction, IAEA's PRIS database. https://pris.iaea.org/pris/worldstatistics/underconstructionreactorsbycountry.aspx https://pris.iaea.org/pris/worldstatistics/underconstruction... On planned reactors, World Nuclear Association. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu... EDIT: wrong link for IAEA's db.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  What matters is how many will be completed, not cancelled. That number is rather smaller.
otherme123 4y ago
That table doesn't support your thesis, specially when you think of the one reactor being built in France. Something being built means little when the time from "start" and "end" is meassured in decades. A better table would be "increase in nuclear output". E.g. fully self driving vehicles are being built, but little or none see the street, much less have a positive ROI. Planned and proposed is even worse. A lot of them would never leave that status. Only energy super eager countries like China or India are effectively increasing nuclear capacity, and in a way that nobody knows if they are financially sound investments.
- modo_mario 4y ago
  >Something being built means little when the time from "start" and "end" is meassured in decades. If you'd go to check for the average build time of a nuclear reactor or the new reactors that come into service you'd notice they're often/typically connected and running 5-6 years after they start building. A lot of that is helped by china and the likes not having horror stories like Finland.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    It's also helped by China starting the construction clock after concrete and steel are already in the ground. You can get good numbers by cheating.
locallost 4y ago
The capacity of plants built now is about the same as it's being retired. This will only accelerate in the future as old plants get more and more decommissioned. I'm comparison there is almost 300GW of capacity in renewables added every year. All nuclear capacity being built now for the next decades is less than what's added in renewables every year, and that's even considering the capacity factor. So they are not being built in any significant way. Percentage of nuclear went down from 20 to 10 percent and it will continue to go down, until it becomes economical or we figure out we can't get renewables to work. I personally wouldn't bet on either of those, but that's just my opinion. There is a third option of course that is very realistic, and that is that the nuclear lobby buys itself a business model through FUD and other means. Currently they realistically don't have one.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  If renewables can't do it, they can at least reach a state where the residual demand is utterly unsuitable to nuclear. If renewables are maxed out there will be long periods where they are supplying all demand; the residue has zero base load.
ncmncm 4y ago
Plants planned or under construction will be cancelled anywhere they are not massively subsidized by government coercion of tax- or ratepayers, as energy prices continue downward. They will be recognized as unable to compete. Existing plants will be mothballed as energy prices drop below the level needed to continue operating, again except where coerced.
- ETH_start 4y ago
  Nuclear power is the cheapest option: https://www.oecd-nea.org/lcoe/ https://www.oecd-nea.org/lcoe/ And it is far more reliable than renewables.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    With enough thumbs on the scale, you can support any conclusion. In this case, neglecting all public subsidies and neglecting CAPEX. It is furthermore a snapshot. Policy for construction needs to consider the future, and renewables cost is still falling fast.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    That's for "LTO": extending the lifespan of existing nuclear plants. The cost of power from new construction nuclear would be much higher.
    - ETH_start 4y ago
      The LTO is the estimated lifespan of the plant. The LTOs provided in that chart are well below the real lifespan of these plants. The capital cost of building the plants is also provided in the chart. That means this accounts for "the cost of power from new construction nuclear" you refer to.
      - pfdietz 4y ago
        LTO is referring to refurbishment efforts to extend the lifespan of an existing plant. Look at the first line in that chart. It's for 20 years of operation of a 1000 MW reactor. The capital cost is listed as $5.93/MWh. If that reactor is operating at 90% capacity factor for 20 years, the total capital cost comes in at less than $1B. That cannot possibly be the cost of building a new nuclear plant. Instead, it's the capital cost of the refurbishment needed to allow an existing reactor to operate for another 20 years. This can surely be a nice way to get more from many existing NPPs (although some of these refurbishment efforts have gone disastrously wrong; see Crystal River 3 in Florida for example), but it has little relevance to the cost of building a new NPP.

brutusborn 4y ago

Do you have any sources for utility scale batteries with reasonable cost? The biggest I know of are in Australia and are extremely expensive, and provide such little reserve they are basically a rounding error.

MisterMower 4y ago
Not to mention they employ batteries fabricated with toxic chemicals. It’s going to be tragic watching folks try to figure out how to safely dispose of these batteries 20 years from now. Not to mention the carbon that will be emitted to make them in the first place.
- nl 4y ago
  Lithium Ion batteries are recyclable and the fact that not many are yet is mostly because of infrastructure rather than any technical issue: https://cen.acs.org/materials/energy-storage/time-serious-recycling-lithium/97/i28 https://cen.acs.org/materials/energy-storage/time-serious-re... This has improved since 2019 (when that article was written) and now all Tesla batteries are recycled[1][2]. [1] https://www.tesla.com/en_AU/support/sustainability-recycling https://www.tesla.com/en_AU/support/sustainability-recycling [2] https://electrek.co/2022/05/09/tesla-increase-battery-recycling-capacity-battery-packs/ https://electrek.co/2022/05/09/tesla-increase-battery-recycl...
  - brutusborn 4y ago
    Neometals im Australia also have leading edge recyling tech, at least leading Western companies.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Concern trolling not welcome here.
tcfhgj 4y ago
Are you talking about lithium batteries? Why on earth?

ajdude 4y ago

And then even after building the plant your community may turn around and decide they don’t want the plant anymore. Then you’re out €1.4bn e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwentendorf_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwentendorf_Nuclear_Power_Plan...

kirso 4y ago
It could have provided for 10% of the demand, cost billions of $ and years to build. Unfortunately the campaign against it and referendum were led by a publication which had conflict of interest in hydropower and used the `scare` tactics for people to perceive the risk in a very extreme way... Morgan Housel talks about this case in his talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9pk3ecuucs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9pk3ecuucs Risk perception ties to the country that you live in, generation you are born and values that are instilled in you based on your surroundings. All this features are outside of your control pretty much but they dictate a lot even in cases like this...

jaredklewis 4y ago

Oil refineries also take years to build and are built on site. The difference is that oil goes onto open markets and it is thus possible for oil refiners to get a return on their investment. We don’t need innovation in nuclear. The nuclear technology we have today is already a miracle technology. Can’t speak to Europe but in the US the issue absolutely is regulation. The exact regulations vary by state, but energy grids are not open markets and the regulations universally disadvantage nuclear and benefit other sources. Safety focused regulations do impose a cost, but the primary issue is that we don’t let nuclear power operators turn a profit.

afterburner 4y ago
> We don’t need innovation in nuclear The Nuclear industry will need that innovation, in order to remain even remotely competitive with the alternatives. It's not improving faster than those alternatives though.
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
  The nuclear industry has had three quarters of a century to be innovative, with enormous public funds pumped into it only because of its defense applications - nuclear weaponry and naval powerplants. At a certain point you have to say "sorry guys, you had your try" and let the existing plants wind down. That's what's happening. Nuclear is being replaced by green generation at 6x the rate it's being lost.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - dron57 4y ago
    Renewable energy is great, but sun and wind are intermittent. Grids cannot base themselves on renewable energy without some sort of impractical battery storage scheme or major advancements in creating renewable Green Hydrogen for fuel cells.
    - 4y ago

afterburner 4y ago

I'm glad this kind of comment is floating to the top of these threads now, instead of the straw man arguments more commonly propagated in the past which consisted of blaming "fear". It's always been $money$. Let's spend the money on the better alternative sources wherever we can. If nothing else, we will see the benefits faster, which is now an even more critical factor than ever as feet have been dragged for decades.

m2fkxy 4y ago
What are better solutions for low-carbon, dispatchable, high power electrical energy generation?
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
  Wind and solar coupled with energy storage systems, all of which have been plunging in price like a rock over the last twenty years.
  - m2fkxy 4y ago
    What large scale energy storage systems are in operation today, or even ready to be rolled out? I quote myself under another of your comment: > Why does Germany performs abysmally wrt. electrical production carbon intensity despite having enough wind/solar installed capacity to cover their consumption?
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      Grid connected batteries are being installed all over the place. And now hydrogen storage is being rolled out too. The hydrogen storage project in Delta, Utah could ultimately (when the salt formation there is fully utilized) store enough hydrogen to supply the entire US average grid power demand for 30 hours. BTW, electrolyzers from China are now being sold to the international market for $0.30/W. Their prices are crashing just like PV did. > Germany Some combination of difficulty of dislodging incumbents whose capital cost is sunk, and political implications from parts of society depending on coal mining. They should have been building more renewables, I agree, and it's too bad for them now that they didn't.

addicted 4y ago

Nuclear projects globally aren’t collapsing because they aren’t “green”. They’ve been collapsing because of the economics despite green subsidies. And where they have succeeded they’re charging customers a lot more money than equivalent solar and wind alternatives have. This is the problem that needs to be solved. And it’s not clear to me how it gets resolved in a much higher cost of borrowing environment than what we’ve had for a decade.

krupan 4y ago
Is there really a place where there is equivalent power from solar and/or wind alone?
- nl 4y ago
  Very many places. Germany: 41% of all power was from renewables in 2021 https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/topics/climate-energy/renewable-energies/renewable-energies-in-figures https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/topics/climate-energy/rene... UK: 43.1% of all power was from renewables in 2020 https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/how-much-uks-energy-renewable https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/how-mu... Australia: 32.5% (2021): https://apo.org.au/node/317318 https://apo.org.au/node/317318 US: 22% expected in 2022: https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/electricity.php https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/electricity.php
  - modo_mario 4y ago
    You're arguing for him. Those places do not go anywhere close to full renewable. Germany being one of your best examples has put out vaaastly more CO2 than let's say France. This because it needs variable output to cover the variable output of it's renewables and as their share of the pie grows so do the costs of providing either storage or variable output. The strategy of our Greens in Belgium too was to build gas plants to cover for when the nuclear reactors were shut down like they always wanted. You may have noticed tho that gas has seen some changes in price and circumstances and a lot of people have started wondering why Greens are so eager to increase CO2 output.

kirso 4y ago

Not sure what do you mean? In many countries nuclear is government subsidised and is the cheapest & cleanest source of energy available compared to say renewables. In fact countries build these because of the price of other alternatives: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-17/czechs-start-7-billion-nuclear-project-as-power-prices-surge https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-17/czechs-st... The caveat is indeed incredibly large CAPEX and very long time, but what is the alternative? At least then you are secured partially for 20-40 years depending on needed capacity. EDIT: typos

ncmncm 4y ago
You contradict yourself. If it were cheap, it would not need to be subsidized. Existing nukes will be mothballed as even their opex is uncompetitive. Governments will, in the end, choose to spend their money more wisely than propping up extremely expensive nukes. Buying their neighbors' renewable overproduction will be cheaper. Building out their own, cheaper yet.

tjmc 4y ago

> 2. A nuclear reactor cannot be shipped, it has to be build on site. Does it? This is the premise behind NuScale's modular SMRs. https://www.nuscalepower.com/technology/fabrication-and-assembly https://www.nuscalepower.com/technology/fabrication-and-asse...

tekknik 4y ago
They also just got the OK from the NRC: https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/nuscale-smr-approval-nuclear-power https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/nuscale-smr-approval-nucl...

KennyBlanken 4y ago

100% correct. Not only have nuclear costs not improved in the three quarters of a century it has existed, it's only gotten more expensive while wind and solar have plunged, dramatically, in costs. In the US, nuclear capacity is being replaced by wind and solar at six times the rate it's being "lost"; the hysterics you read here on HN and reddit are just that. And the rate of solar and wind deployment is skyrocketing. The people building grids and investing in generation are putting their money into wind and solar, because it's the cheapest and easiest. "Several years" is an understatement; it takes years just to go from "everything is completely constructed and wired and plumbed" to "we are connected to the grid." This happened in Canada, where a reactor at an existing plant was brought back into use. The process took years. You can't just drop a nuke anywhere. In order to be cost-effective, they have to be enormous and run at full capacity as continuously as possible. You can't just drop gigawatts of power generation anywhere you want in the grid,so the grid might have to get reworked or a plant might only be feasible in a handful of geographic locations. The plant needs access to massive quantities of cooling water, and a geologically stable area. They also need to be able to suck down enormous amounts of power, because even when a reactor is shut down and not "generating power", it requires many megawatts of electricity to run all the cooling systems; a reactor takes weeks to stop generating significant amounts of heat. Ditto for startup (this is true of many plants, but especially nuclear.) They take many hours to adjust power levels. That's not what the grid needs; the grid needs highly reactive power, on the scale of seconds to minutes. Pumped hydro has been doing that in the UK for decades, helping the national grid meet the famous grid surge where everyone flips on their electric kettles when the BBC goes to break during a programming. The pumped hydro facilities in the UK and EU can react within seconds to changing grid demand. The US has pumped hydro as well, but battery systems are getting so cheap, they're competitive and don't have the risks hydro dams do. Reactor vessels aren't built on-site. The majority are built by Japan Steel Works, one of the few companies in the world that makes reactor vessels. They have fixed capacity, require very high grade metal, and so on. One cannot just snap fingers, throw money at the problem under a "green" funding bill, and get more reactors. There's also the massive carbon footprint of construction and commissioning, which takes another decade of operation to break even on, if nuclear reactors ever break even. The industry almost completely ignores the carbon impact of mining and refining uranium as well as the carbon footprint of the massive supply chain and workforce it takes to keep a plant running. Meanwhile, solar and wind pay back their carbon footprint in a matter of months to a year or two at most. We need the very fastest ways to reduce carbon generation, and that will only come from conservation, a radical shift in transportation policy (namely discontinuing subsidizing low occupancy vehicle use), and large-scale conversion to electricity as an energy source.

hackerlight 4y ago

> The costs of solar, wind and batteries are dropping exponentially but the costs of nuclear are not improving. So where can I see a cost comparison that factors in the cost of storage? I've probably seen 20 people say this exact same thing and have never been able to find an actual cost breakdown that supports it.

readams 4y ago
Nobody knows what storage would cost because there is no technology that currently exists to make storage possible. Battery technology helps a lot to stabilize the grid over seconds to minutes or even hours, but the kind of storage that would be needed to be 100% solar and wind just doesn't exist. Pumped hydro is great but there are not many places where it is feasible. So the reality of the current situation is that solar and wind are cheap now since when they are a relatively small percentage of the power and you can fall back on gas and coal storage isn't really needed. But in the future the costs of solar and wind will skyrocket since you'll need to overbuild the capacity by a huge amount, plus build lots of expensive transmission infrastructure, to work around the fact that storage technology at the appropriate scale doesn't exist yet.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Storage is trivial. It will be built after there is enough renewable generating capacity to charge it from.
  - LorenPechtel 4y ago
    Ask anyone with an off-grid solar installation how trivial it is. Hint: The storage costs more than the power. Considerably more last time I looked at the numbers.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      Off-grid power has no choice but batteries. Utilities have others.

otherme123 4y ago

And again, the article does the same mistake they always do: attack wind and solar more than fossil or hydro. Instead of selling nuclear as the ideal companion to solar, it's always a sad try to convince us that we are wrong investing in solar and eolic, and the money should be going to more nuclear. My guess is that utilities are not happy with the decentralization of PV. They like fossils, hydro and nuclear because you can't run them in you backyard at competitive prices. But you can buy PV and thermosolar on friday at Home Depot, slap it to the roof, and have a better ROI than any utility starting sunday. Get a Powerball or something similar, and they would never see another dollar from your pocket. They, nuclear lobby, are known to be maneuvering to get more nuclear reactors installed quickly before is too late, but on conditions like: 1) government subsidizes the costs, 2) they assume possible overbudgets, 3) insures the plants for 100 years or so, and 4) guarantee an income for 50 years, in concept of "backup". For that they need a favorable public opinion, begging for more nuclear plants, and the politics would abide.

ip26 4y ago
Ironically, to me their best play is to board the renewable train as a base load alternative to storage, which is not yet mature.
- runarberg 4y ago
  Currently nuclear reactors take well over a decade from construction to start of operation. I think few are willing to bet that storage will still be a problem 10 years from now. Carbon capture from gas natural gas (also an alternative that exists today) is another technology you’d have to bet won’t become economically feasible by the time your nuclear power plant finally becomes operational. Honestly a base-load alternative is not such a strong argument in favor.
  - HyperSane 4y ago
  - modo_mario 4y ago

sva_ 4y ago

Indeed, we should rather put all our hopes in generating energy from a resource that can/will be disrupted by a small volcanic eruption.

mcronce 4y ago

This presupposes that economics are the most important thing. That isn't really the case. It doesn't matter how much money you have when the climate burns to the ground around you, while energy sources that work when they want to fail to provide for your needs.

aemreunal 4y ago
This is often the unspoken part but I agree that it's one of, if not the most important aspect for our energy needs. I understand economics can't just be thrown out of the window but I feel like a lot of governments don't see the big picture and invest in these solutions "at a loss" now so we can not have climate catastrophes that make our planet uninhabitable, at least to large chunks of the population.
cycomanic 4y ago
It is funny how the same people (the nuclear lobby) who used to argue against solar due to economics (too expensive) are now arguing we should not consider economics anymore. The thing is though, at the moment most countries still produce significant portions of their elecricity from fossils. So if we want to remove them as quickly as possible, we should use the solution that gives us the highest capacity for a fixed amount of money (assuming we have only fixed funds). Moreover because nuclear is so CAPEX driven both in cost and CO2 budget, it takes a long time to become carbon positive. So we would actually increase CO2 in the short term by building nuclear power plants. So the best current strategy is to build up renewables to replace fossil as quick as possible, keep existing nuclear running, and develop storage. If the current trends of the cost for solar and wind continue, we might not even need much storage because building overcapacity is so cheap.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Coal producers love every nuke project: that represents a solid decade more sales, vs. wind or solar that would start displacing coal immediately, several times as much in the end for the same investment, and then radically less opex.

fisherjeff 4y ago

I agree with you completely. However, I do think it’s important to point out that the people complaining about risk perceptions are also right but the effort of correcting those perceptions faces the huge headwind of human psychology. Of course people are going to overweight the outcome and underweight the probability when estimating the EV of something - that’s how we work! That’s why Powerball exists!

nopenopenopeno 4y ago

This is wrong. Nuclear energy is very cheap, green, and reliable. The problem with nuclear is the very large initial investment required, which delays the time to profit. In other words, there is no problem with nuclear energy. The problem is with our economic system that demands short-term profits.

ncmncm 4y ago
No nuke started today, or even recently, will ever pay back its CAPEX.

raverbashing 4y ago

While I agree with the issue of costs, nuclear reactors being slow to build and having to be built on site is a technological problem, not a fundamental limitation Why can't we have nuclear sub technology for civilian use?

ncmncm 4y ago
If it would have been competitive, it would be there already. It ain't, never was.

shakow 4y ago

> A nuclear reactor cannot be shipped Have you ever heard of nuclear aircraft carriers and submarines?

ncmncm 4y ago
Desperate, much?
- shakow 4y ago
  Am I living in an alternate universe? US, UK, Russia, France have been putting nuke plants in submarines for half a century, most of these countries have done the same with surface ships, be it carriers or ice-breakers, Russia has built nuke plants on barges to provide power for remote areas; heck, the US even ran a nuke plant on a plane, and I am the one being desperate?
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Yes. Yes, you are. In none of those cases have economic considerations been dispositive, or even of much interest.
    - shakow 4y ago
      That's moving goalposts; of course small-scale production is going to cost an arm and a leg. The original post said it was impossible, not expensive.
      - ncmncm 4y ago
        In an open, uncoerced market, anything too expensive does not happen. People opt for cheaper alternatives, or for more value for the same money. Or, somewhere in between.
        shakow 4y ago
        Of course, and naturally, first-of-a-kind are bloody expensive. Maybe there's a way to make small nuke plants economical, maybe there's not, I dont' know. But it's definitely not ‶impossible″ to humankind.

belorn 4y ago

> A nuclear reactor cannot be shipped. There does exist an exception to this. Russia built a floating nuclear power plant. There is a lot of controversy around it. However the main claim that economy is the center of the argument is true. Fossil fuels are exceptional cheap as a battery solution to be combined with solar and wind, especially wind which don't have 365 days of charge cycles. Natural gas in Europe play the central role of filling in when wind/solar production goes down, with oil and coal coming in next. Since fossil fuels aren't burned all the time, a much higher cost per kw/h is tolerated, even when the spot price reaches upwards to 10x higher than the average cost. This winter they are expecting prices to exceed that by twice or more, and the average this year is already looking to be twice of last year. The economics right now is a bit funky. Nuclear has most of their cost attached to the constructions, so with energy prices being almost doubled compared to last year, nuclear is looking quite economical. If inflation continues as it has been then a nuclear plant built 30 years will start to look really cheap compared to a wind + gas turbine. The biggest winners in term of profit however are the gas power plant owners, seeing record profits as a result of being able to charge record prices.

tekknik 4y ago
> Russia built a floating nuclear power plant. There is a lot of controversy around it. There are many floating reactors, they’re called aircraft carriers and warships. At any rate, an actual shippable reactor is available and the first will be built in 2029: https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/nuscale-smr-approval-nuclear-power https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/nuscale-smr-approval-nucl...

mbar84 4y ago

Let the market decide. You may be right and I wish you well if you're basing investment decisions on your projections. It does not seem plausible to me that nuclear would be uncompetitive on a free market. There are cost curves and economies of scale that may not be visible due to the regulatory burden and regulatory uncertainty.

ncmncm 4y ago
Nukes have never been competitive. Every last nuke ever built depended utterly on subsidy coerced from taxpayers or ratepayers.
- mbar84 4y ago
  Then so be it, that's perfectly fine. I'm the last to say people should throw their money out the window when there are better options around.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

panick21_ 4y ago

> However, the main reason is the economy. Yes but the economy is not free of consideration of these other factors. > The costs of solar, wind and batteries are dropping exponentially They are no longer dropping exponentially and insofar they do its because of mass production. Something not unique to renewable. If all world governments had invested the same in nuclear we could see the same kind of price reductions. > 2. A nuclear reactor cannot be shipped, it has to be build on site. This is not universally true. Some reactors can be ships and others can be shipped in a small number of parts. > A change in regulation might lower the costs, but it's not going to improve much the innovation dynamics. You are missing how good current regulation are at destroying innovation. Its literally impossible to build an small example reactor to do research. Its basically either is a very tiny university research reactor, or alternatively you need a full operational license but guess what, currently in the US its not even remotely possible to get an operational license for a non-PWR. So why would anybody even do research? This is beyond a whole bunch of other issues with nuclear regulation. > In conclusion, all this talking is mostly irrelevant: nuclear reactors are simply not going to be built because they are not competitive. So in conclusion, we destroyed the nuclear industry and nuclear research for the most part and they are not competitive, therefore lets never do anything to fix that. Yes, nuclear innovation cycle will always be slower, but the same can be said for trains, or many other things that are very useful.