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No, we can't have a bit of both, because despite heroic efforts with tens of billions of dollars being dumped into nuclear since 2008, it hasn't produced. We t

No, we can't have a bit of both, because despite heroic efforts with tens of billions of dollars being dumped into nuclear since 2008, it hasn't produced. We tried four reactors back then, using a new regulatory process that was supposed to speed construction and reduce costs. Instead, costs and timelines ballooned 3x. Two of the four reactors were abandoned half-way through construction, resulting in rate payers holding the bag for billions of dollars and no Wh delivered to the grid. Executives are being criminally prosecuted for fraud. The other two reactors are supposed to complete late this year, but I don't think any honest person should rely on such timelines when they inevitably slip every single time. Nuclear is not something we can realiably build. We are bad at big construction jobs to begin with. But when you add in training up massive new workforces for extremely specialized welding or concrete pour skills, it's hugely inefficient because we don't know how to utilize this labor effectively. People sit idle for months, waiting for their chance to work. Just a gigantic clusterfuck of logistical (mis)management. And construction productivity has stagnated since the 70s, while manufacturing productivity has gone through the roof. We should use our limited construction capacity to build factories to manufacture things, not spend it on nuclear reactors. $15B spent on solar or battery production facilities will churn out many many GW year after year of additional capacity, whereas it only buys a single GW of nuclear. And that's in the best case scenario where we actually finish the damn reactor...

scythe 4y ago
>We tried four reactors back then, using a new regulatory process that was supposed to speed construction and reduce costs. Instead, costs and timelines ballooned 3x. Two of the four reactors were abandoned half-way through construction, resulting in rate payers holding the bag for billions of dollars and no Wh delivered to the grid. These were the Westinghouse AP1000 units to be installed in Georgia and South Carolina, contract beginning in 2008. It's worth noting that four other AP1000 units also from Westinghouse were built and installed in China, beginning construction in 2009 and entering into operation in 2018. The total cost of both systems was slightly more than half the cost of the failed project in South Carolina. >And construction productivity has stagnated since the 70s, while manufacturing productivity has gone through the roof. You seem to be arguing that we shouldn't bother building major projects, but I think this implies the opposite: we need to find ways to fix the construction industry. The US is currently facing a situation where cities can't grow like they used to; growing cities quickly become unaffordable, where by contrast Chicago sustained rapid growth for decades before the Great Depression.
- epistasis 4y ago
  We go into the energy transition with the economy and construction capacity we have, not the construction capacity we wish we had. The time to transition is now, and making that transition with the ample tools we have right now is a good thing. It's not an argument that we shouldnt improve construction. It's an argument that we should at a minimum do what we know how to do. If you have ideas on how to improve construction efficiency in the US, it's an absolutely massive addressable market that gets too little attention, and should definitely be addressed. I would love to go work for somebody that is fixing construction, if I had the right skills. I would love even more to do it myself, but I have zero experience or ideas.
evilos 4y ago
I guess you think the Koreans and Chinese are just fundamentally different from everyone else then because they're pumping out reactors just fine, today. The French, Americans, Russians, and Japanese have all had periods of time where they built them quickly and cost effectively too. But then various institutional rot sets in. We're going to have to keep building big things anyways so it's not like having that capability is wasted.
- epistasis 4y ago
  There definitely are fundamental differences in our capabilities here, and you seem to believe the same too. Look, for example, at the challenges that are being experienced as we try to build chip fabs in the US. Instintutional knowledge and capability are real things. And I definitely think that construction capability is an important thing to build. But let's improve our construction capability on building real things that get built and improve our capabilities, such as battery factories or solar panel factories or transmission lines or other things that get build closer to on-time, and then use those contractors that succeed to try more ambitious projects. Let's not piss away billions of dollars with no sustained knowledge growth or construction capacity improvement. Trying to build even, say, 10GW of new nuclear right now would be posing away 90% of the capital. We don't even know who we would really hire for this! Until we have a track record that's strong enough to attract investment, I don't see the rush to burn money on nuclear builds. It won't help the climate, and it doesn't even help the nuclear industry.
  - evilos 4y ago
    We already paid the first of a kind cost at Votgle, ordering several more AP1000s is exactly what we should do at this point. We now have a workforce that has made the mistakes and knows what not to do. If you don't want to do that, you can do what the UAE did and hire the Koreans to teach you how to build plants. They went from no nuclear program to 5.4 GW of clean energy in 10 ish years.
    - epistasis 4y ago
      I find it baffling that you can know about the disaster at Vogtle and think that it's something that should be tried again right away. What utility would do this? It is financial suicide. There's no allocator of capital whos going to look at Vogue and think "yes this is worth another shot". None. What investor? There's two half-built reactors in South Carolina. Who would be foolish to even try to complete them now? There is literally no one with the expertise to execute on more reactors that thinks we should order more AP1000, because now in 2023 we know much more than we did in 2008 and we know that nobody in the US can build them competitively.

scythe 4y ago

>We tried four reactors back then, using a new regulatory process that was supposed to speed construction and reduce costs. Instead, costs and timelines ballooned 3x. Two of the four reactors were abandoned half-way through construction, resulting in rate payers holding the bag for billions of dollars and no Wh delivered to the grid. These were the Westinghouse AP1000 units to be installed in Georgia and South Carolina, contract beginning in 2008. It's worth noting that four other AP1000 units also from Westinghouse were built and installed in China, beginning construction in 2009 and entering into operation in 2018. The total cost of both systems was slightly more than half the cost of the failed project in South Carolina. >And construction productivity has stagnated since the 70s, while manufacturing productivity has gone through the roof. You seem to be arguing that we shouldn't bother building major projects, but I think this implies the opposite: we need to find ways to fix the construction industry. The US is currently facing a situation where cities can't grow like they used to; growing cities quickly become unaffordable, where by contrast Chicago sustained rapid growth for decades before the Great Depression.

epistasis 4y ago
We go into the energy transition with the economy and construction capacity we have, not the construction capacity we wish we had. The time to transition is now, and making that transition with the ample tools we have right now is a good thing. It's not an argument that we shouldnt improve construction. It's an argument that we should at a minimum do what we know how to do. If you have ideas on how to improve construction efficiency in the US, it's an absolutely massive addressable market that gets too little attention, and should definitely be addressed. I would love to go work for somebody that is fixing construction, if I had the right skills. I would love even more to do it myself, but I have zero experience or ideas.

evilos 4y ago

I guess you think the Koreans and Chinese are just fundamentally different from everyone else then because they're pumping out reactors just fine, today. The French, Americans, Russians, and Japanese have all had periods of time where they built them quickly and cost effectively too. But then various institutional rot sets in. We're going to have to keep building big things anyways so it's not like having that capability is wasted.

epistasis 4y ago
There definitely are fundamental differences in our capabilities here, and you seem to believe the same too. Look, for example, at the challenges that are being experienced as we try to build chip fabs in the US. Instintutional knowledge and capability are real things. And I definitely think that construction capability is an important thing to build. But let's improve our construction capability on building real things that get built and improve our capabilities, such as battery factories or solar panel factories or transmission lines or other things that get build closer to on-time, and then use those contractors that succeed to try more ambitious projects. Let's not piss away billions of dollars with no sustained knowledge growth or construction capacity improvement. Trying to build even, say, 10GW of new nuclear right now would be posing away 90% of the capital. We don't even know who we would really hire for this! Until we have a track record that's strong enough to attract investment, I don't see the rush to burn money on nuclear builds. It won't help the climate, and it doesn't even help the nuclear industry.
- evilos 4y ago
  We already paid the first of a kind cost at Votgle, ordering several more AP1000s is exactly what we should do at this point. We now have a workforce that has made the mistakes and knows what not to do. If you don't want to do that, you can do what the UAE did and hire the Koreans to teach you how to build plants. They went from no nuclear program to 5.4 GW of clean energy in 10 ish years.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    I find it baffling that you can know about the disaster at Vogtle and think that it's something that should be tried again right away. What utility would do this? It is financial suicide. There's no allocator of capital whos going to look at Vogue and think "yes this is worth another shot". None. What investor? There's two half-built reactors in South Carolina. Who would be foolish to even try to complete them now? There is literally no one with the expertise to execute on more reactors that thinks we should order more AP1000, because now in 2023 we know much more than we did in 2008 and we know that nobody in the US can build them competitively.