5 ms·

This is a misguided response. Nuclear power plants have all been essentially custom, one-off projects built by inexperienced crews. It’s little surprise the cos

This is a misguided response. Nuclear power plants have all been essentially custom, one-off projects built by inexperienced crews. It’s little surprise the cost overruns. It’s a very different proposition with identical, smaller modular plants that are being proposed that will be built in the tens to hundreds. Costs will drop dramatically while safety will increase, both by the design of the plants and the economies of scale.

bruce511 3y ago
You are correct - one offs incur huge "unknowns" which bloat budgets. You are correct that the obvious solution is standard production of modular designs are the solution to that. This has all be true and obvious for several decades. Yet the realisation of this approach seems to still be far away. It also doesn't factor in the non-technical hurdles, costs, and delays that are involved here. Environmental impacts, and local-population-resistance are significant, often terminal, factors in plant construction. Put another way, nobody cares if I have solar panels on my roof. But if I have a tiny modular reactor in the garden the neighbours will (not surprisingly) object. I say this as a nuclear supporter.
- eru 3y ago
  > Put another way, nobody cares if I have solar panels on my roof. But if I have a tiny modular reactor in the garden the neighbours will (not surprisingly) object. Yes, though your neighbours will probably also object to you putting up one of those big wind turbines in your backyard. Or a coal fired power plant.
  - bruce511 3y ago
    Im not sure they'd complain if I put up a small wind turbine. If I was in a more rural area I doubt theyd object to a big wind turbine. (The extent of their worry being noise, and danger if it self destructed in bad weather.) Clearly a coal-fired plant would be an issue, to the degree to which they pollute the neighbours. There are diesel generators here attached to factories etc, and nobody really cares. Objection to nuclear though is more visceral. With diesel I can hear the noise and decide if I don't like it. With coal I might notice the smell. But I don't think either would silently kill me. Nuclear leaks are invisible, and accumulative, so it can be (disproportionately) scary. Certainly those who are opposed to it will use fear to rally other people to their side. Fear is a strong motivating emotion that is easily manipulated.
    - mrweasel 3y ago
      > If I was in a more rural area I doubt theyd object to a big wind turbine You'd be surprised. There was a protest in my area against putting up five new wind turbines at an industrial site as the existing buildings are take down. People object that it would ruin their view... The current buildings is part of a massive coal fired power plant which is slowly being decommissioned and there are already three existing turbines.
rtpg 3y ago
France, France, France, France, France. I need nuclear proponents to read about France. A nation made a bet on "let's do all nuclear". It basically worked, but there was no magical cost decrease. They have an immense amount of institutional knowledge, huge educational system, massive amounts of resources. Their nukes are big and expensive and not really on time. There is no magic at the end of the tunnel if Greenpeace disappears. The world isn't Sim City, power plants need water access and have location concerns, and it's not a question of just dropping a bunch of truck-sized plants across the world and magically solving everything. Having said that, France is a success story of course. It's cool that it's all set up. But even after building it up, running these plants are expensive, there's often load issues meaning they are not fully utilized... "nuclear is free easy energy" is science fiction. That's fine, though! It's normal that we have to do stuff to power society. EDIT: to be clear, I'm cool with nuclear, but I am not picky about where my watts come from.
- ViewTrick1002 3y ago
  France went "Negative learning by doing" [1] in their initial build out and Flamanville 3 [2] is looking like a complete boondoggle. [1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421510003526 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014... [2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Pl...
  - rtpg 3y ago
    > The French nuclear case illustrates the perils of the assumption of robust learning effects resulting in lowered costs over time in the scale-up of large-scale, complex new energy supply technologies. The uncertainties in anticipated learning effects of new technologies might be much larger that often assumed, including also cases of “negative learning” in which specific costs increase rather than decrease with accumulated experience. Oof, talk about a nasty abstract. Will need to find a way to look at this paper later.
- spullara 3y ago
  There is a magical end that we can optimize where it is just about making nuclear fission energy more efficient.

bruce511 3y ago

You are correct - one offs incur huge "unknowns" which bloat budgets. You are correct that the obvious solution is standard production of modular designs are the solution to that. This has all be true and obvious for several decades. Yet the realisation of this approach seems to still be far away. It also doesn't factor in the non-technical hurdles, costs, and delays that are involved here. Environmental impacts, and local-population-resistance are significant, often terminal, factors in plant construction. Put another way, nobody cares if I have solar panels on my roof. But if I have a tiny modular reactor in the garden the neighbours will (not surprisingly) object. I say this as a nuclear supporter.

eru 3y ago
> Put another way, nobody cares if I have solar panels on my roof. But if I have a tiny modular reactor in the garden the neighbours will (not surprisingly) object. Yes, though your neighbours will probably also object to you putting up one of those big wind turbines in your backyard. Or a coal fired power plant.
- bruce511 3y ago
  Im not sure they'd complain if I put up a small wind turbine. If I was in a more rural area I doubt theyd object to a big wind turbine. (The extent of their worry being noise, and danger if it self destructed in bad weather.) Clearly a coal-fired plant would be an issue, to the degree to which they pollute the neighbours. There are diesel generators here attached to factories etc, and nobody really cares. Objection to nuclear though is more visceral. With diesel I can hear the noise and decide if I don't like it. With coal I might notice the smell. But I don't think either would silently kill me. Nuclear leaks are invisible, and accumulative, so it can be (disproportionately) scary. Certainly those who are opposed to it will use fear to rally other people to their side. Fear is a strong motivating emotion that is easily manipulated.
  - mrweasel 3y ago
    > If I was in a more rural area I doubt theyd object to a big wind turbine You'd be surprised. There was a protest in my area against putting up five new wind turbines at an industrial site as the existing buildings are take down. People object that it would ruin their view... The current buildings is part of a massive coal fired power plant which is slowly being decommissioned and there are already three existing turbines.

rtpg 3y ago

France, France, France, France, France. I need nuclear proponents to read about France. A nation made a bet on "let's do all nuclear". It basically worked, but there was no magical cost decrease. They have an immense amount of institutional knowledge, huge educational system, massive amounts of resources. Their nukes are big and expensive and not really on time. There is no magic at the end of the tunnel if Greenpeace disappears. The world isn't Sim City, power plants need water access and have location concerns, and it's not a question of just dropping a bunch of truck-sized plants across the world and magically solving everything. Having said that, France is a success story of course. It's cool that it's all set up. But even after building it up, running these plants are expensive, there's often load issues meaning they are not fully utilized... "nuclear is free easy energy" is science fiction. That's fine, though! It's normal that we have to do stuff to power society. EDIT: to be clear, I'm cool with nuclear, but I am not picky about where my watts come from.

ViewTrick1002 3y ago
France went "Negative learning by doing" [1] in their initial build out and Flamanville 3 [2] is looking like a complete boondoggle. [1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421510003526 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014... [2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Pl...
- rtpg 3y ago
  > The French nuclear case illustrates the perils of the assumption of robust learning effects resulting in lowered costs over time in the scale-up of large-scale, complex new energy supply technologies. The uncertainties in anticipated learning effects of new technologies might be much larger that often assumed, including also cases of “negative learning” in which specific costs increase rather than decrease with accumulated experience. Oof, talk about a nasty abstract. Will need to find a way to look at this paper later.
spullara 3y ago
There is a magical end that we can optimize where it is just about making nuclear fission energy more efficient.