3 ms·

Economics of scale never worked out for nuclear. How many more hundreds of billions in of subsidies do you want to add to the fire to try "one more time"? Becau

Economics of scale never worked out for nuclear. How many more hundreds of billions in of subsidies do you want to add to the fire to try "one more time"? Because this time it surely is different! https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421510003526 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> Economics of scale never worked out for nuclear Source? Because they sure as hell pan out in the American military and Chinese civil fleets. > How many more hundreds of billions in of subsidies do you want to add Zero. Instead, make permitting—particularly for new, safer plant types—faster. Not less rigorous. Faster.
- epistasis 3y ago
  Nuclear economies of scale, in the very best cases, have been very low. See for example: > The costs of the French nuclear scale-up: A case of negative learning by doing > Drawing on largely unknown public records, the paper reveals for the first time both absolute as well as yearly and specific reactor costs and their evolution over time. Its most significant finding is that even this most successful nuclear scale-up was characterized by a substantial escalation of real-term construction costs. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421510003526 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014... There's a more exhaustive paper (by Lovering, maybe?) where it finds a few cases of economies of scale, e.g. South Korea, but the savings are really tiny compared to a tech with a real learning curve, like battery storage. If you have any numbers showing that US military reactors have economies of scale, I would love to see it. Not that we could use HEU in civilian reactors, but the construction lessons might be useful. I have never found a fan of US military reactors that could cite the cost numbers, and I have not been successful finding them either. As for China, I don't know anybody that trusts their cost numbers. I prefer to look at where they are actually spending their money, and their planned nuclear build is absolutely a tiny tiny fraction of what their solar and wind numbers. And the plans for wind and solar are increasing year after year, whereas nuclear plans are staying steady.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    France hasn’t built a plant in decades [1]. Nevertheless, in each deployment series, the last plants cost less than the first. The story you’re highlighting doesn’t dismiss economies of scale, but instead highlights higher-than-expected maintenance costs in fifty-year-old infrastructure. (“Operating costs have remained remarkably flat” because those are experiencing scale effects.) [1] https://www.reuters.com/graphics/EUROPE-ENERGY/NUCLEARPOWER/gdvzwweqkpw/ https://www.reuters.com/graphics/EUROPE-ENERGY/NUCLEARPOWER/...
    - epistasis 3y ago
      They have been trying to build a plant for a decade, and one could consider them to have finally built Olkiluoto in Finland, in what can only be considered a bit of a disaster. I would like to see the data that in the US that a series of reactors saw economies of scale, and to what degree, and if that can overcome the initial underestimates of 2x-3x that are used to secure an initial decision to build.
- ViewTrick1002 3y ago
  > American military Selling to the world's least price sensitive customer does not translate into competitive products on cutthroat markets. > Zero. Let's abolish the Price–Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act as well so nuclear plants have to pay the true cost of their insurance? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear...
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > Selling to the world's least price sensitive customer Doesn’t change that the Nth reactor is (in real dollars) cheaper than the (N - 1)th. And civil nuclear reactors have had economies of scale demonstrated for decades [1]. The problem is we realise these at the scale of individual plants instead of across the production system. [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/1058857 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1058857

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> Economics of scale never worked out for nuclear Source? Because they sure as hell pan out in the American military and Chinese civil fleets. > How many more hundreds of billions in of subsidies do you want to add Zero. Instead, make permitting—particularly for new, safer plant types—faster. Not less rigorous. Faster.

epistasis 3y ago
Nuclear economies of scale, in the very best cases, have been very low. See for example: > The costs of the French nuclear scale-up: A case of negative learning by doing > Drawing on largely unknown public records, the paper reveals for the first time both absolute as well as yearly and specific reactor costs and their evolution over time. Its most significant finding is that even this most successful nuclear scale-up was characterized by a substantial escalation of real-term construction costs. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421510003526 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014... There's a more exhaustive paper (by Lovering, maybe?) where it finds a few cases of economies of scale, e.g. South Korea, but the savings are really tiny compared to a tech with a real learning curve, like battery storage. If you have any numbers showing that US military reactors have economies of scale, I would love to see it. Not that we could use HEU in civilian reactors, but the construction lessons might be useful. I have never found a fan of US military reactors that could cite the cost numbers, and I have not been successful finding them either. As for China, I don't know anybody that trusts their cost numbers. I prefer to look at where they are actually spending their money, and their planned nuclear build is absolutely a tiny tiny fraction of what their solar and wind numbers. And the plans for wind and solar are increasing year after year, whereas nuclear plans are staying steady.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  France hasn’t built a plant in decades [1]. Nevertheless, in each deployment series, the last plants cost less than the first. The story you’re highlighting doesn’t dismiss economies of scale, but instead highlights higher-than-expected maintenance costs in fifty-year-old infrastructure. (“Operating costs have remained remarkably flat” because those are experiencing scale effects.) [1] https://www.reuters.com/graphics/EUROPE-ENERGY/NUCLEARPOWER/gdvzwweqkpw/ https://www.reuters.com/graphics/EUROPE-ENERGY/NUCLEARPOWER/...
  - epistasis 3y ago
    They have been trying to build a plant for a decade, and one could consider them to have finally built Olkiluoto in Finland, in what can only be considered a bit of a disaster. I would like to see the data that in the US that a series of reactors saw economies of scale, and to what degree, and if that can overcome the initial underestimates of 2x-3x that are used to secure an initial decision to build.
ViewTrick1002 3y ago
> American military Selling to the world's least price sensitive customer does not translate into competitive products on cutthroat markets. > Zero. Let's abolish the Price–Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act as well so nuclear plants have to pay the true cost of their insurance? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear...
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Selling to the world's least price sensitive customer Doesn’t change that the Nth reactor is (in real dollars) cheaper than the (N - 1)th. And civil nuclear reactors have had economies of scale demonstrated for decades [1]. The problem is we realise these at the scale of individual plants instead of across the production system. [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/1058857 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1058857