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Listening to Jigar Shah, head of the DOE loans program, indicated part of the reason it's so expensive to build NPPs is that each nuclear power plant is a bespo

• atyppo 3y ago
  I have no problem with this personally. But I fear that nuclear fearmongers would capitalize on this as a possible "worst-case scenario" if we tried to deploy such a plan. Is this thought misguided?
• AtlasBarfed 3y ago
  You mean maybe like a shipping container sized reactor that is simply stacked (and replaced / defueled for maintenance)? Like one that can have its liquid fuel removed by just piping? That's very development was done using a closet-sized reactor that could be easily powered up and powered down so it CAN scale with demand? Whose design is inherently meltdown-proof? Which uses almost all its fuel so there's no nuclear waste to transport? That can breed its fuel from Thorium? The time to invest in this was 20 years ago. Certainly the viability of nuclear missed the boat 10 years ago. Nuclear will have to wait for solar/wind/battery and other grid levelling alternatives (home solar + storage, EVs-as-grid-batteries) to mature and develop before they have a stable economic target. Then nuclear needs to figure out how to make that target. I think it is a LFTR, but who knows. I don't think solid fuel rods are the way. Too much waste, too much danger inherent to the fuel packaging. And seriously, "the institute for progress"? The nuclear industry is so out of touch their marketing and lobbying is 30 years out of date.
• pfdietz 3y ago
  The way to build standardized nuclear plants is for the reactor maker to build merchant plants, operate them, and sell the output into competitive power markets. It's like SpaceX building and operating their own vehicles, and how many renewable and natural gas power plants work. It's just that no such merchant nuclear plant has ever been built anywhere. There's a serious lack of dog food here.
  • munificent 3y ago
    Of all of the things to entrust to the invisible hand of the private sector, I would put nuclear power generation dead fucking last on the list. If you thought Bhopal and Exxon Valdez were bad, wait until some CEO decides to juice The Atomic Corporation's Q4 earnings by skipping a few safety inspections and half the Eastern seaboard no longer needs streetlights because everyone's tumors glow in the dark.
    • pfdietz 3y ago
      Oh, I don't mean these merchant plants would be unregulated. It's just that if they were such great ideas, why aren't the power plant builders just going ahead and doing it themselves? According to the nuclear proponents, there's so much potential profit just going uncollected.
      • pdonis 3y ago
        > why aren't the power plant builders just going ahead and doing it themselves? Because they would still have to build the plants somewhere, and the legal environment in the US is such that anywhere you build your project will be snowed under by NIMBY Lawsuits and your investment will never pay back anything. So nobody wants to try.
        • pfdietz 3y ago
          Except that's not true. NIMBY lawsuits are not what has affected recent nuclear builds. There are strict limits on what such lawsuits can do.
• fundad 3y ago
  I think industry likes it bespoke because the money is practically unlimited. Selling a basic design or a micro reactor means the industry would have to compete for the first time.
  • pfdietz 3y ago
    Or perhaps the cost overruns are not accidents, but are the whole point. Nuclear power plants are a way to monetize the quirks of regulated monopolies. Get the plant approved and then shovel on the "oh gosh, who could have predicted this" cost increases. I mean, it's not like the people involved don't realize what's going to happen when they start building something that isn't even fully designed yet. As long the state regulators keep going along, each increase in capital cost is an increase in the earnings of the regulated utility. The perverse incentive is to balloon the costs as much as the regulators can bear. That the reactors are first of a kind is a feature, not a bug, since it lets that first foot-in-the-door lowballed estimate get approved.
• barake 3y ago
  France has sort of done this - they have 56 reactors in operation all based on the same 3 basic designs[1]. It's pretty incredible how quickly the plants were designed, tested, and built. Over a span of 15 years they brought 56 reactors online[2] - in the US we'd be lucky to build and commission a single reactor in that time span. [1] https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/frances-efficiency-in-the-nuclear-fuel-cycle-what-can-oui-learn https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/frances-efficiency-in-t... [2] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/french.html https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/read...
  • i_am_proteus 3y ago
    Friendly reminder that the US does have such a program (the Navy's nuclear propulsion program), and several reactors are commissioned every year.
    • MrBodangles 3y ago
      One of the core problems with nuclear is the size and scale of risk posed by cost cutting and neglect over its lifetime, especially the waste. People neither trust for-profit enterprises or present/future governments with that sort of responsibility (and with empirically justifiable reasons). I’m aware newer models are stated to be significantly safer, but assurances mean little when these institutions have repeatedly lied and failed in the past. Either way, US carriers are probably one of the safest places for nuclear, as they’re mission critical for the life of the carrier and most likely to receive the utmost care… Plus the US has a long history of rubber stamping virtually unlimited funds to solve any military problem, whether the people approve or not. The handling of the waste is still a major concern, but what about the consequences of a torpedo compromising the reactor in warfare?
  • Ringz 3y ago
    Many claim that France’s 1974 Messmer plan resulted in the building of its 58 reactors in 15 years. This is not true. The planning for several of these nuclear reactors began long before. For example, the Fessenheim reactor obtained its construction permit in 1967 and was planned starting years before. In addition, 10 of the reactors were completed between 1991-2000. As such, the whole planning-to-operation time for these reactors was at least 32 years, not 15. That of any individual reactor was 10 to 19 years.
• hotpotamus 3y ago
  I have to imagine that someone has had the idea to create a standard design prior to 2023.
  • deleted 3y ago
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  • cogman10 3y ago
    In fact, there are a lot of standard designs. There's just not A standard design. The issue is we build 1 or 2 plants at a time with a given design and by the time those plants are finished (10+ years) new regulations and new standards are in practice (see Gen II vs Gen III vs Gen III+ vs Gen IV reactors). The good news is that Gen IV reactors, if approved, are much cheaper to build than Gen III/III+. The bad news is nobody wants to build them.
    • philipkglass 3y ago
      Generation III reactors were also promoted as more affordable than Gen II before they had actually been built. Anyone can build a great reactor on paper. I would evaluate Gen IV cost and schedule numbers after they start generating power. In 2014 Westinghouse still touted high confidence in affordable, predictable construction for its Generation III AP1000 design: https://web.archive.org/web/20141225195417/http://westinghousenuclear.com/New-Plants/AP1000-PWR/Economic-Benefits https://web.archive.org/web/20141225195417/http://westinghou... From the outset, the AP1000 PWR was designed to reduce capital costs and to be economically competitive with contemporary fossil-fueled plants. This requires lower overnight construction costs and higher confidence in the construction schedule. The AP1000 plant reduces the amount of safety-grade equipment required by using passive safety systems. Consequently, less Seismic Category I building volume is required to house the safety equipment (approximately 45 percent less than a typical reactor). The AP1000 plant’s modular construction design further reduces the construction schedule and the construction risks, with work shifted to factories with their better quality and cost control as well as labor costs that are less than those at the construction site. This also allows more work to be done in parallel. The use of heavy lift cranes enables an “open top” construction approach, which is effective in reducing construction time. With new computer-modeling capabilities, Westinghouse is able to optimize and choreograph the construction plan of an AP1000 unit in advance by simulation. The result is a very high confidence in the construction schedule. In actuality, AP1000 construction went so far over budget and behind schedule that it bankrupted Westinghouse 3 years later: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_Electric_Company#2017_Chapter_11_bankruptcy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_Electric_Company#...
• throw_a_grenade 3y ago
  Yeah, that's what TFA is about. People thought about it, but it turns out it doesn't matter, because regulatory requirements were a moving target and were applied retroactively to any project not yet finished. This quote sums it up nicely: > It doesn’t matter how standardized your design is if you end up needing to change it on every project to meet new requirements.
• gweinberg 3y ago
  Yeah, but how can that happen in a changing regulatory environment? From the article it seems to me that even if you had built a plant and loved the design, it probably wouldn't be legal to build another one just like it a few years down the road. The author says that part of the reason for cost overruns is that the rules change even after construction has begun.
  • hansthehorse 3y ago
    I worked in commercial nuclear operations for 23 years. It was a two unit site with unit one built first. It was designed as two identical units. By the time unit 2 was finished the regulations had changed so much that final reactor required operators to get a seperate license for each unit.
  • phone8675309 3y ago
    If DoE provided the regulations then they could update the template design as they update the regulations - if the build of the plant needed to change because of a change in regulations then they could account for that in the design.
    • barney54 3y ago
      But DOE doesn’t write the regs, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does.
• Schroedingersat 3y ago
  The idea that this hasn't been tried repeatedly is a myth.
• Simulacra 3y ago
  That accounts for part of it, but there's a lot of litigation and environmental redtape that slows these things down. Before you can build a nuclear plant, you have to do an environmental impact report. Then somebody can complain, or sue, to stop over something in that environmental impact report. The ability of interest groups to halt nuclear, even green energy, is a bit ridiculous.
  • ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
    that may account for a small part of it, but the article goes into detail on what actually accounts for it
• atoav 3y ago
  Getting the design certified and using that again is certainly a way of saving cost. Any regulator worth their salt would however still have to do the on the ground checks (e.g. if the right materials are used etc). I think every HN user who programs knows that the process of copy-pasting comes with it's own danger. You are not automatically getting a working thing if the context you are pasting into differs ever so slightly. If one plans to build a lot of nuclear plants that context might be something you can control. One of the things I would worry about is water and how to cool it. Last summer most of France's nuclear power plants were switched off because the rivers they use for cooling were dried out. And the presidictions on the climate catastrophe have gotten worse.
• concordDance 3y ago
  The regulatory ratchet, headline fear and a complete refusal to consider having a $/QALY number is the reason for the insane costs. Nuclear power is the most over regulated industry in the world, with many safety measures giving returns of less than a single quality adjusted life year per billion dollars! (You can get this number simply by comparing the accident rate and QALY costs of 1970s reactors to modern ones)
  • Gwypaas 3y ago
    All while the government still subsidizes the accident insurance. Lets remove that as well! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear... Compare the $15 billion funded by the industry with Fukushima looking to cost at least $150 billion to clean up.
    • epups 3y ago
      The clean up was absolutely over the top and not guided by objective measures. The government effectively already absorbs all costs involving the externalities of coal, oil and other dirty sources of energy, which add up to way more than 150 billion.
      • Gwypaas 3y ago
        Great that the alternative in 2023 in renewables then! You're arguing a strawman comparing nuclear to fossil fuels.
        • concordDance 3y ago
          Last I checked switching to pure renewables would triple electricity costs due to storage needs. You'd be way better off spending that money on nuclear (including accident cleanup) and healthcare.
          • Gwypaas 3y ago