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I live in Georgia. I'm happy we built this, but I'm so unhappy about the mismanagement and the added cost to my power bill. Despite the danger, nuclear is exac

I live in Georgia. I'm happy we built this, but I'm so unhappy about the mismanagement and the added cost to my power bill. Despite the danger, nuclear is exactly the kind of thing I want a SpaceX-type company to tackle. Nuclear should be orders of magnitude cheaper. It should be developed at a frenetic pace, with even the scary failure modes being tolerated. Safety doesn't matter to the degree we think it does when literally thousands of people die in traffic accidents, and hundreds of thousands to preventable diseases. We don't even need to build near population centers to get this off the ground. We have so much space to build and test safely in complete isolation. We're in this spot because of the decades of fearmongering from the greens and the geopolitical adversaries masquerading(!) as greens. We also have this deeply-held reverence, and perhaps even guilt, because we built the bomb. This thinking has held us back so unfathomably much, and for nearly a century. Nuclear could propel us forward as a civilization if we'd just let go of the fear.

renewiltord 3y ago
There are a bunch of Small Modular Reactor companies (Nuscale is probably the most well known in the media but venerable Westinghouse has one too). Elon Musk might be the world's foremost genius at handling government-related businesses (i.e. identifying where a startup can unblock government leaders who want things done but can't use existing orgs - electric / space) and he's stayed away from nuclear. I suspect a SpaceX analogue cannot be built in this field. Part of why renewables are beating SMR companies is incrementality. You can build and expand power projects and scale up from small installations up high. It's surprisingly hard to find economical places to build this in the US. Even geothermal in completely uninhabitable places gets met with opposition from groups like the Burning Man guys. I'm sure we'll conquer these regulatory things within the next half century, but until then we're in trouble and insistent on walking the precipice.
- throw0101d 3y ago
  > There are a bunch of Small Modular Reactor companies (Nuscale is probably the most well known in the media but venerable Westinghouse has one too). SMRs are mostly useful for small grids. Efficiency for large grids comes from large reactors (>700MW, and perhaps even 1000MW) that are built in a pipeline (I've heard the term "Large Modular Reactor"). When the province of Ontario built out its CANDUs it built them in pairs, and plants had 'packs' of fours and eights. It was a fairly standardized design and so the supply chain settled down and could churn out components.
nwiswell 3y ago
> Safety doesn't matter to the degree we think it does when literally thousands of people die in traffic accidents, and hundreds of thousands to preventable diseases. I vehemently disagree. Another major disaster is all it will take to finish off nuclear for good.
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  How so? Even if we include Chernobyl (which emitted so much pollution because it didn't have secondary containment, something Western reactors have) nuclear is still one of the safest form of energy production, beating out pretty much anything except non-rooftop solar.
  - adventured 3y ago
    Because as Japan and Germany demonstrated, nuclear events cause masses of people to become hyper emotional, hyper irrational in their thinking. The Japanese and Germans are not known for their wildly emotional thinking, to emphasize the context. You're trying to apply logical thinking to a subject that historically has been governed by emotion: how people feel about it.
    - graycat 3y ago
      Something doesn't match here! First, > The Japanese and Germans are not known for their wildly emotional thinking Okay. But the French, uh, sorry, but IMHO, the French are "known for their wildly emotional thinking", e.g., French music, painting, cooking, ballet, wines, architecture, perfume, women's fashions? Second, it's the French who have done especially well with nuclear power! Doesn't match! How? Why? How could that be? Uh, a guess: From the old French kings to Napoleon and DeGaulle, the French have had, have put up with, relatively strong, maybe autocratic, governments. So, the difference might be that the French have autocratic governments. Uh, right, Japan and Germany have had governments that were even more autocratic, that is, until the end of WWII. Since then, maybe France has been the more autocratic. So, why might autocracy help in being successful with nuclear power and, in the US, our democracy has fumbled, dropped, tripped over, kicked, fell over the ball? Obvious suspicion: The US has had (A) too many politicians, lawyers, and news journalists causing trouble just because they like causing trouble and (B) too little strong leadership, e.g., autocracies, able to make the decisions mostly via the science and engineering to get the real work done without being blocked, attacked, misled, dragged around, kicked, etc. by (A). Just a guess, guys! The evidence is sitting there: Emotional France has done well. Rational Japan and Germany, not so good. US, with plenty of science and engineering smarts, fell over the ball, might have been cheaper to generate the energy just by burning dollar bills in a coal plant! WHY??? Got a better explanation?
bradfox2 3y ago
You are looking for Kairos. They are iterating and succeeding. Most of the hurdles are not engineering but licensing and regulatory.

renewiltord 3y ago

There are a bunch of Small Modular Reactor companies (Nuscale is probably the most well known in the media but venerable Westinghouse has one too). Elon Musk might be the world's foremost genius at handling government-related businesses (i.e. identifying where a startup can unblock government leaders who want things done but can't use existing orgs - electric / space) and he's stayed away from nuclear. I suspect a SpaceX analogue cannot be built in this field. Part of why renewables are beating SMR companies is incrementality. You can build and expand power projects and scale up from small installations up high. It's surprisingly hard to find economical places to build this in the US. Even geothermal in completely uninhabitable places gets met with opposition from groups like the Burning Man guys. I'm sure we'll conquer these regulatory things within the next half century, but until then we're in trouble and insistent on walking the precipice.

throw0101d 3y ago
> There are a bunch of Small Modular Reactor companies (Nuscale is probably the most well known in the media but venerable Westinghouse has one too). SMRs are mostly useful for small grids. Efficiency for large grids comes from large reactors (>700MW, and perhaps even 1000MW) that are built in a pipeline (I've heard the term "Large Modular Reactor"). When the province of Ontario built out its CANDUs it built them in pairs, and plants had 'packs' of fours and eights. It was a fairly standardized design and so the supply chain settled down and could churn out components.

nwiswell 3y ago

> Safety doesn't matter to the degree we think it does when literally thousands of people die in traffic accidents, and hundreds of thousands to preventable diseases. I vehemently disagree. Another major disaster is all it will take to finish off nuclear for good.

Manuel_D 3y ago
How so? Even if we include Chernobyl (which emitted so much pollution because it didn't have secondary containment, something Western reactors have) nuclear is still one of the safest form of energy production, beating out pretty much anything except non-rooftop solar.
- adventured 3y ago
  Because as Japan and Germany demonstrated, nuclear events cause masses of people to become hyper emotional, hyper irrational in their thinking. The Japanese and Germans are not known for their wildly emotional thinking, to emphasize the context. You're trying to apply logical thinking to a subject that historically has been governed by emotion: how people feel about it.
  - graycat 3y ago
    Something doesn't match here! First, > The Japanese and Germans are not known for their wildly emotional thinking Okay. But the French, uh, sorry, but IMHO, the French are "known for their wildly emotional thinking", e.g., French music, painting, cooking, ballet, wines, architecture, perfume, women's fashions? Second, it's the French who have done especially well with nuclear power! Doesn't match! How? Why? How could that be? Uh, a guess: From the old French kings to Napoleon and DeGaulle, the French have had, have put up with, relatively strong, maybe autocratic, governments. So, the difference might be that the French have autocratic governments. Uh, right, Japan and Germany have had governments that were even more autocratic, that is, until the end of WWII. Since then, maybe France has been the more autocratic. So, why might autocracy help in being successful with nuclear power and, in the US, our democracy has fumbled, dropped, tripped over, kicked, fell over the ball? Obvious suspicion: The US has had (A) too many politicians, lawyers, and news journalists causing trouble just because they like causing trouble and (B) too little strong leadership, e.g., autocracies, able to make the decisions mostly via the science and engineering to get the real work done without being blocked, attacked, misled, dragged around, kicked, etc. by (A). Just a guess, guys! The evidence is sitting there: Emotional France has done well. Rational Japan and Germany, not so good. US, with plenty of science and engineering smarts, fell over the ball, might have been cheaper to generate the energy just by burning dollar bills in a coal plant! WHY??? Got a better explanation?

bradfox2 3y ago

You are looking for Kairos. They are iterating and succeeding. Most of the hurdles are not engineering but licensing and regulatory.