4 ms·
There's no reason to believe nuear couldn't benefit from economies of scale.
by throwaway48476 2y ago
There's no reason to believe nuear couldn't benefit from economies of scale.
- ben_w 2y agoEverything seen so far does not suggest it will improve. SMRs might, possibly, change that — we shall have to see. I have nothing against SMRs, but they're novel, and I've seen a lot of novel ideas that seem interesting, go nowhere.
- throwaway48476 2y agoAlmost all nuclear plants in the west were built in the 70s and 80s. The number built since is miniscule so of course the costs are going to be huge, they're one off projects.
- ben_w 2y agoTrue but irrelevant. The construction of new reactors now is unlikely to be in numbers greater than back then. (Unless new ones are SMR, which is why there's now business interest in SMRs. They may well have numbers large enough to cut costs).
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- throwaway48476 2y agoThe other issue is that nuclear research has been underfunded for decades. We could have had new safe effective and cost efficient designs.
- ben_w 2y agoThat is why I say "might, possibly", rather than being firmly yes or no. R&D is high-variance.
- throwaway48476 2y agoResearch is, engineering less so.
- ViewTrick1002 2y agoNuclear energy has had a massive research advantage over its entire lifetime. It simply never delivers due to being horrifically expensive. You just keep making empty promises that never work out in reality. Just look at Flamanville 3 being 7x over budget and 13 years late on a 5 year construction schedule. You want more of that?!?