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> live a half life Not sure if that was intentional, but nice. I didn't even know there could be such a thing as a nuclear startup. How do you think they will

> live a half life Not sure if that was intentional, but nice. I didn't even know there could be such a thing as a nuclear startup. How do you think they will succeed if NuScale didn't/couldn't? Or was NuScale mismanaged?

LikeBeans 3y ago
I don't this they were mismanaged. They spent a lot of effort and money on R&D and to learn the market and get certified. However executing on buildouts didn't workout. That doesn't mean another company couldn't buy their IP and design and then pick it up where they left off. Maybe that latter company is better and selling and installing. So I wouldn't write off their approach just yet.
- epistasis 3y ago
  Agree that "mismanagement" is probably not the right word, I think that they were probably taking a calculated risk that the economics would work out in the end. The core of the business was executing on cheaper, more reliable buildouts. SMRs might even be more expensive per watt than larger reactors, and that could be OK as long as it was cheap enough, and led to project sizes that were smaller than $20B and had much smaller chance of project failure. Certification is useless for a design that's too expensive, as that was half of the core value proposition. (With the other half of the value proposition being smaller risk.) Right now it looks like a core gamble of the company has not paid off. It's unclear if they can learn any lessons from the cost increase that would let them come up with a cheaper second design. But I'd suspect that the founders were just wearing rose colored glasses for their first cost estimates, with the hope that some future innovation would let them meet unrealistic starting targets, and it hasn't happened yet.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    I think part of the problem with NuScale was that the nuclear industry was misfocused. There was a lot of effort on making reactors safer, under the misapprehension that safety concerns were the obstacle to be overcome. NuScale's design has passive safety features (immersion of the vessel into a larger mass of water). But these features mean the reactor is larger than it otherwise might be. They traded higher cost for higher safety when the actual problem of nuclear was cost, not inadequate safety. I think the attitude of "we're being held back by public opinion, because the greens have convinced them nuclear is dangerous" did not do nuclear any good.

LikeBeans 3y ago

I don't this they were mismanaged. They spent a lot of effort and money on R&D and to learn the market and get certified. However executing on buildouts didn't workout. That doesn't mean another company couldn't buy their IP and design and then pick it up where they left off. Maybe that latter company is better and selling and installing. So I wouldn't write off their approach just yet.

epistasis 3y ago
Agree that "mismanagement" is probably not the right word, I think that they were probably taking a calculated risk that the economics would work out in the end. The core of the business was executing on cheaper, more reliable buildouts. SMRs might even be more expensive per watt than larger reactors, and that could be OK as long as it was cheap enough, and led to project sizes that were smaller than $20B and had much smaller chance of project failure. Certification is useless for a design that's too expensive, as that was half of the core value proposition. (With the other half of the value proposition being smaller risk.) Right now it looks like a core gamble of the company has not paid off. It's unclear if they can learn any lessons from the cost increase that would let them come up with a cheaper second design. But I'd suspect that the founders were just wearing rose colored glasses for their first cost estimates, with the hope that some future innovation would let them meet unrealistic starting targets, and it hasn't happened yet.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  I think part of the problem with NuScale was that the nuclear industry was misfocused. There was a lot of effort on making reactors safer, under the misapprehension that safety concerns were the obstacle to be overcome. NuScale's design has passive safety features (immersion of the vessel into a larger mass of water). But these features mean the reactor is larger than it otherwise might be. They traded higher cost for higher safety when the actual problem of nuclear was cost, not inadequate safety. I think the attitude of "we're being held back by public opinion, because the greens have convinced them nuclear is dangerous" did not do nuclear any good.