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> When your basic assumption is that an entire industry is doing something dumb, it’s probably wrong. If nuclear was actually that cheap electric companies woul

> When your basic assumption is that an entire industry is doing something dumb, it’s probably wrong. If nuclear was actually that cheap electric companies would constantly be proposing new projects, but it’s not. The industry is doing the right thing but the reason it’s not choosing nuclear is because regulatory burdens make project success and prices highly variable and uncertain, not to mention a shift in political winds kills your project. The reason isn’t purely a price thing. > The industry abandoned nuclear because electricity demand stopped increasing decades ago There’s no way this is true considering that crypto and AI have started to push significant power demands. > Now having not built nuclear for decades once off projects are constantly wildly over budget and behind schedule. Solar + batteries is currently beating even optimistic estimates for nuclear just about anywhere, let alone current boondoggle pricing. That’s a choice we get to make. China is building their nuclear muscle because they realize it’s required for baseload for solar, way cheaper than batteries, and the only way you’re going to be able to charge all these EVs.

Retric 2y ago
> There’s no way this is true considering that crypto and AI have started to push significant power demands. I was describing what happened when we stopped building nuclear power plants, not what’s happening now or in the near future. From 1.7TWh in 1975 to 3.1TWh in 1995 is an 82% increase in demand in just 20 years, but the next 20 years only takes us to 3.9TWh in 2015 a 26% increase. That had massive knock on effects in terms of power plant construction, move forward to 2023 demand is only at 4TWh less than a 3% increase. https://www.statista.com/statistics/201794/us-electricity-consumption-since-1975/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/201794/us-electricity-co... The point of that was simply context. > The reason isn’t purely a price thing. All that risk ultimately just equates to a cost, if nuclear was wildly profitable to operate nobody would care about those risks but it’s at best barely breaking even when nothing goes wrong. Also, costs rose not because of regulations in a vacuum. 3 mile island happened because of a lack of maintenance, you don’t solve that problem without spending more money on maintenance. And so it goes for a huge range of issues like foreign material in cooling ponds. Suddenly there’s all this effort when working around cooling ponds to avoid a multi million dollar issue and that’s not free, but there’s no free lunch where you can avoid the expense and not also be cautious. Thus nuclear power was always expensive, the costs where initially just hidden as risk and escalating maintenance costs.
- vlovich123 2y ago
  > All that risk ultimately just equates to a cost Right. My point though is that that cost is because of political decisions we make, not inherent in the technology. We could also choose to make solar projects equally risky in such ways; force solar projects to require to be baseline generators, not risk grid stability, and stop subsidizing home panel installations and see what happens to the solar industry. I’m not saying we should do that because solar is an important partner in the energy mix, but nuclear is more important to decarbonize as we still fail to see a drop in green house emissions on any grid that’s invested purely in renewables with only nuclear showing that it can offload carbon inputs; renewables have only generally shown the ability to level off growth of carbon inputs at the grid level (unless you look relatively small grids not in the richest nations, but the richest nations are the biggest polluters). > Also, costs rose not because of regulations in a vacuum. 3 mile island happened because of a lack of maintenance, you don’t solve that problem without spending more money on maintenance Just not true on several fronts. First the consequences of 3 mile island were wildly overblown and generated unnecessary fear. The cleanup cost was $1B which is negligible. In fact the plant is being restarted on the other reactor by 2028. Secondly, reactor design is hugely important. Fukushima and 3 mile island are Gen II reactors while Chernobyl was a Gen I reactor and we can see the drastically smaller issues we’ve had from such reactors. Gen III reactors are much safer and are cheaper while Gen IV reactors are generally completely fail-safe (i.e. doesn’t matter the quality of maintenance on the safety of the reactor). So pretending like nuclear has a constant maintenance cost that’s ever increasing ignores our ability to solve problems like this at the design stage. The problem is that regulations that remain stuck responding to Gen I designs being constantly applied to newer generations.
  - Retric 2y ago
    > The cleanup cost was $1B which is negligible. “1 billion dollars” is not negligible when your company is paying it either directly or through insurance. They also lost a nuclear reactor (~$2.5 billion in 2018 dollars to build - depreciation) and lost revenue, so they were out far more than just 1B. Worse this isn’t a one off event, every single nuclear reactor was facing the same issue. Just from a pure economic perspective if someone says you need to spend say 20-30 m/year to avoid losing your nuclear power plant and paying 1B on top of this your going to do some internal calculations and figure out how much maintenance is worth 1B dollars and frankly it’s a lot of maintenance. But now every single nuclear reactor is now paying more every year on maintenance forever. The industry just got more expensive seemingly from thin air thus 3 mile island cost the nuclear industry a lot more than just what was spent on the island. Worse the same thing happens after basically every expensive incident. Almost never does the industry look at an expensive accident and say well that’s just the cost of doing business we don’t need to change anything. Which then means every year it just keeps getting more expensive.

Retric 2y ago

> There’s no way this is true considering that crypto and AI have started to push significant power demands. I was describing what happened when we stopped building nuclear power plants, not what’s happening now or in the near future. From 1.7TWh in 1975 to 3.1TWh in 1995 is an 82% increase in demand in just 20 years, but the next 20 years only takes us to 3.9TWh in 2015 a 26% increase. That had massive knock on effects in terms of power plant construction, move forward to 2023 demand is only at 4TWh less than a 3% increase. https://www.statista.com/statistics/201794/us-electricity-consumption-since-1975/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/201794/us-electricity-co... The point of that was simply context. > The reason isn’t purely a price thing. All that risk ultimately just equates to a cost, if nuclear was wildly profitable to operate nobody would care about those risks but it’s at best barely breaking even when nothing goes wrong. Also, costs rose not because of regulations in a vacuum. 3 mile island happened because of a lack of maintenance, you don’t solve that problem without spending more money on maintenance. And so it goes for a huge range of issues like foreign material in cooling ponds. Suddenly there’s all this effort when working around cooling ponds to avoid a multi million dollar issue and that’s not free, but there’s no free lunch where you can avoid the expense and not also be cautious. Thus nuclear power was always expensive, the costs where initially just hidden as risk and escalating maintenance costs.

vlovich123 2y ago
> All that risk ultimately just equates to a cost Right. My point though is that that cost is because of political decisions we make, not inherent in the technology. We could also choose to make solar projects equally risky in such ways; force solar projects to require to be baseline generators, not risk grid stability, and stop subsidizing home panel installations and see what happens to the solar industry. I’m not saying we should do that because solar is an important partner in the energy mix, but nuclear is more important to decarbonize as we still fail to see a drop in green house emissions on any grid that’s invested purely in renewables with only nuclear showing that it can offload carbon inputs; renewables have only generally shown the ability to level off growth of carbon inputs at the grid level (unless you look relatively small grids not in the richest nations, but the richest nations are the biggest polluters). > Also, costs rose not because of regulations in a vacuum. 3 mile island happened because of a lack of maintenance, you don’t solve that problem without spending more money on maintenance Just not true on several fronts. First the consequences of 3 mile island were wildly overblown and generated unnecessary fear. The cleanup cost was $1B which is negligible. In fact the plant is being restarted on the other reactor by 2028. Secondly, reactor design is hugely important. Fukushima and 3 mile island are Gen II reactors while Chernobyl was a Gen I reactor and we can see the drastically smaller issues we’ve had from such reactors. Gen III reactors are much safer and are cheaper while Gen IV reactors are generally completely fail-safe (i.e. doesn’t matter the quality of maintenance on the safety of the reactor). So pretending like nuclear has a constant maintenance cost that’s ever increasing ignores our ability to solve problems like this at the design stage. The problem is that regulations that remain stuck responding to Gen I designs being constantly applied to newer generations.
- Retric 2y ago
  > The cleanup cost was $1B which is negligible. “1 billion dollars” is not negligible when your company is paying it either directly or through insurance. They also lost a nuclear reactor (~$2.5 billion in 2018 dollars to build - depreciation) and lost revenue, so they were out far more than just 1B. Worse this isn’t a one off event, every single nuclear reactor was facing the same issue. Just from a pure economic perspective if someone says you need to spend say 20-30 m/year to avoid losing your nuclear power plant and paying 1B on top of this your going to do some internal calculations and figure out how much maintenance is worth 1B dollars and frankly it’s a lot of maintenance. But now every single nuclear reactor is now paying more every year on maintenance forever. The industry just got more expensive seemingly from thin air thus 3 mile island cost the nuclear industry a lot more than just what was spent on the island. Worse the same thing happens after basically every expensive incident. Almost never does the industry look at an expensive accident and say well that’s just the cost of doing business we don’t need to change anything. Which then means every year it just keeps getting more expensive.