3 ms·

> We’ve also gotten very good at operating reactors without incident, increasing our capacity factor, or uptime, to more than 90% (France is only around 75%).

> We’ve also gotten very good at operating reactors without incident, increasing our capacity factor, or uptime, to more than 90% (France is only around 75%). Mandatory nick-picking from a chauvinist French: France is “only” around 70+% because we do use nuclear for much more than just base production, and modulate the production to fit the demand variation, not because Americans operators are somehow better ;). Also, unsurprisingly from A16Z they put most of the blame on regulation, but the main reason why nuclear is costly today is because there's barely an industry around it and there's no mass production. And unsurprisingly, custom built one-shot stuff cost much more than serial production.

johnzim 3y ago
It's pretty hard to have an industry with the weight of current regulation - not just in terms of how much scrutiny fission receives compared to technologies we _know kill people at an alarming rate_, such as fossil fuel combustion, but also in regulating something that was still relatively new technology the same way that we regulated other energy generation. At least with smaller reactors it's more feasible to get operating data and be on a path to economies of scale. The US now has a second chance to get it right, and the US can always be counted on to do the right thing, after exhausting every other alternative.
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  The railway and aeronautics industry have regulation constraints that aren't that far to what nuclear has[1], without preventing the industry to thrive. The worst thing that can ever happen to the nuclear industry would be another catastrophic incident (even one with almost no casualty like Fukushima) so I think taking safety extremely seriously is the only thing that nuclear energy can afford. [1]: My wife work in nuclear engineering, and I did work for the rail industry for some time. It's not exactly the same, but it's also not that different compared to other regulated industries, like healthcare for instance, where it's full YOLO compare to both of the above.
vitorbaptistaa 3y ago
> they put most of the blame on regulation, but the main reason why nuclear is costly today is because there's barely an industry around it and there's no mass production. Isn't that because of regulation (which was put in place in part because the population demanded it)?
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  No, in France for instance it's because we were done building the first series (it doesn't make sense to build more reactors than what we've built in the 75-2000 era). In many other countries in Europe it was because of the strong public backlash against nuclear after Chernobyl , and because of the oil glut in the 80s which made fossil fuel affordable again for decades.
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  It was always pretty costly, even 60 years ago and it hasn't come down much, that is why the cost argument is not trivial, especially with other sources being so cheap these days. And not to forget: some things are freakishly dangerous. For example, spent fuel rods provide deadly amounts of radiation in basically no time to people around them.
  - littlestymaar 3y ago
    > And not to forget: some things are freakishly dangerous. For example, spent fuel rods provide deadly amounts of radiation in basically no time to people around them. You know what's deadly in a nuclear plant? The industrial machinery, the heavy plates of metal, the rotating devices at high speed, the trucks crossing the plant to ship heavy stuff, the dears crossing in front of the cars of the night shift workers. All of this kill and maim workers from time to time, like in every factory in the world. But you don't care about them. You just care about fantasies of fluorescent green stuff killing people with deadly invisible radiation, even though it barely ever happened in the real world (and it's not fluorescent green either).
    - RandomLensman 3y ago
joak 3y ago
Exactly, 100% nuclear is not achievable without storage: nuclear can do baseload but not daily peaks.
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  > Exactly, 100% nuclear is not achievable without storage: nuclear can do baseload but not daily peaks. Fabulous how you get that from my comment. Talk about confirmation bias. It's literally the opposite, as illustrated by France doing most of its daily load variations from nuclear.
- Krssst 3y ago
  70% is the capacity factor of the plants, not the ratio of nuclear-generated electricity in France's grid (though it's also around this value if I record well). Nuclear can do load following: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load-following_power_plant#Nuclear_power_plants https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load-following_power_plant#N... Capacity factor of 100% is not feasible because you need maintenance of the plants (probable true for every single form of electricity production). Regarding whether or not stricly 100% of nuclear in the grid is feasible, I don't now enough about grids to say whether only using load-following nuclear power plants (without hydro/gas turbines) could do the job. We have hydro in France, might as well use it rather than have only NPPs, and dams are great for load-following.
  - littlestymaar 3y ago
    > whether only using load-following nuclear power plants (without hydro/gas turbines) could do the job. It is feasible, but the problem would be the peak in winter: that would mean having more than twice as many nuclear reactors to be able to deal with a few winter nights with about 100GW of consumption. That'd be very wasteful. > We have hydro in France, might as well use it rather than have only NPPs, and dams are great for load-following. Depends on what kind of hydro though: mountain barrages are, but not really Run-of-the-river hydro.
- rcxdude 3y ago
  It can do it if you have enough load following and overbuild plants, it's just expensive.
specialist 3y ago
> ... barely an industry around it and there's no mass production. Said another way: traditional nuclear power generation cannot jump onto the cost learning curve (Wright's Law). Time will tell if small modular reactors can or will make that leap. Decades from now. H2 is closer. (Because we've pointed a fire hose of money towards H2 and not nuclear.) So the window for a nuclear revival, in any form, is small and getting smaller.
cranky908canuck 3y ago
Nuclear could succeed if the plant size (and cost, and time to build) got smaller. I think it's at a disadvantage wrt wind/solar (see my other comment), but I guess the 'tiny reactor' designs have a sporting chance, assuming that they solve the time-to-first-kwh problem and piggyback on the same storage solutions as wind/solar. There are definitely cases where micro-nuclear might be good, the trick is to scale it past those use-cases.

johnzim 3y ago

It's pretty hard to have an industry with the weight of current regulation - not just in terms of how much scrutiny fission receives compared to technologies we _know kill people at an alarming rate_, such as fossil fuel combustion, but also in regulating something that was still relatively new technology the same way that we regulated other energy generation. At least with smaller reactors it's more feasible to get operating data and be on a path to economies of scale. The US now has a second chance to get it right, and the US can always be counted on to do the right thing, after exhausting every other alternative.

littlestymaar 3y ago
The railway and aeronautics industry have regulation constraints that aren't that far to what nuclear has[1], without preventing the industry to thrive. The worst thing that can ever happen to the nuclear industry would be another catastrophic incident (even one with almost no casualty like Fukushima) so I think taking safety extremely seriously is the only thing that nuclear energy can afford. [1]: My wife work in nuclear engineering, and I did work for the rail industry for some time. It's not exactly the same, but it's also not that different compared to other regulated industries, like healthcare for instance, where it's full YOLO compare to both of the above.

vitorbaptistaa 3y ago

> they put most of the blame on regulation, but the main reason why nuclear is costly today is because there's barely an industry around it and there's no mass production. Isn't that because of regulation (which was put in place in part because the population demanded it)?

littlestymaar 3y ago
No, in France for instance it's because we were done building the first series (it doesn't make sense to build more reactors than what we've built in the 75-2000 era). In many other countries in Europe it was because of the strong public backlash against nuclear after Chernobyl , and because of the oil glut in the 80s which made fossil fuel affordable again for decades.
RandomLensman 3y ago
It was always pretty costly, even 60 years ago and it hasn't come down much, that is why the cost argument is not trivial, especially with other sources being so cheap these days. And not to forget: some things are freakishly dangerous. For example, spent fuel rods provide deadly amounts of radiation in basically no time to people around them.
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  > And not to forget: some things are freakishly dangerous. For example, spent fuel rods provide deadly amounts of radiation in basically no time to people around them. You know what's deadly in a nuclear plant? The industrial machinery, the heavy plates of metal, the rotating devices at high speed, the trucks crossing the plant to ship heavy stuff, the dears crossing in front of the cars of the night shift workers. All of this kill and maim workers from time to time, like in every factory in the world. But you don't care about them. You just care about fantasies of fluorescent green stuff killing people with deadly invisible radiation, even though it barely ever happened in the real world (and it's not fluorescent green either).
  - RandomLensman 3y ago

joak 3y ago

Exactly, 100% nuclear is not achievable without storage: nuclear can do baseload but not daily peaks.

littlestymaar 3y ago
> Exactly, 100% nuclear is not achievable without storage: nuclear can do baseload but not daily peaks. Fabulous how you get that from my comment. Talk about confirmation bias. It's literally the opposite, as illustrated by France doing most of its daily load variations from nuclear.
Krssst 3y ago
70% is the capacity factor of the plants, not the ratio of nuclear-generated electricity in France's grid (though it's also around this value if I record well). Nuclear can do load following: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load-following_power_plant#Nuclear_power_plants https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load-following_power_plant#N... Capacity factor of 100% is not feasible because you need maintenance of the plants (probable true for every single form of electricity production). Regarding whether or not stricly 100% of nuclear in the grid is feasible, I don't now enough about grids to say whether only using load-following nuclear power plants (without hydro/gas turbines) could do the job. We have hydro in France, might as well use it rather than have only NPPs, and dams are great for load-following.
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  > whether only using load-following nuclear power plants (without hydro/gas turbines) could do the job. It is feasible, but the problem would be the peak in winter: that would mean having more than twice as many nuclear reactors to be able to deal with a few winter nights with about 100GW of consumption. That'd be very wasteful. > We have hydro in France, might as well use it rather than have only NPPs, and dams are great for load-following. Depends on what kind of hydro though: mountain barrages are, but not really Run-of-the-river hydro.
rcxdude 3y ago
It can do it if you have enough load following and overbuild plants, it's just expensive.

specialist 3y ago

> ... barely an industry around it and there's no mass production. Said another way: traditional nuclear power generation cannot jump onto the cost learning curve (Wright's Law). Time will tell if small modular reactors can or will make that leap. Decades from now. H2 is closer. (Because we've pointed a fire hose of money towards H2 and not nuclear.) So the window for a nuclear revival, in any form, is small and getting smaller.

cranky908canuck 3y ago

Nuclear could succeed if the plant size (and cost, and time to build) got smaller. I think it's at a disadvantage wrt wind/solar (see my other comment), but I guess the 'tiny reactor' designs have a sporting chance, assuming that they solve the time-to-first-kwh problem and piggyback on the same storage solutions as wind/solar. There are definitely cases where micro-nuclear might be good, the trick is to scale it past those use-cases.