5 ms·

Well, if you want to answer that question, you probably also need to figure out the hypothetical cost of the other power sources minus environmental regulations

by eru 1y ago

Well, if you want to answer that question, you probably also need to figure out the hypothetical cost of the other power sources minus environmental regulations. Nuclear would be (and used to be) massively cheaper, before regulations went wild against it. I'm deliberately saying 'went wild', because the earlier nuclear power generation that was built to saner standards also has turned out to be incredibly safe already. (Basically, anyone who avoided insane Soviet bullshit had safe nuclear power, as measured in eg fatalities per Joule of electricity generated.)

juliankauai 1y ago
Except of course, Fukushima. Or any nuclear plant that gets hit by tsunami, earthquake, terrorism,or other natural disaster.
- yobbo 1y ago
  Were there any deaths from the Fukushima nuclear disaster? A large area was evacuated and "human costs" were great. But as I recall, no deaths from radiation.
  - Gibbon1 1y ago
    People whose metabolic reserve is low often die when you stress them. I saw a study claiming 440 excess deaths from the Los Angeles fires. I'll make an assumption that permanently moving old and health impaired people from the Fukushima exclusion zone had a similar increase in mortality. And then a bit of looking leads me to this. "The evacuation itself also was not without severe consequences. The accident was in the winter, and the evacuation of 840 patients or elderly people in nursing homes and health-care facilities apparently resulted in 60 immediate deaths due to hypothermia, dehydration, trauma and deterioration of serious medical conditions (Tanigawa et al 2012) and upwards of 100 deaths in subsequent month" https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0952-4746/33/3/497 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0952-4746/33/3/49... Like the Grapes of Wrath where the family starts out for California and the grandparents both die on the way.
- LarsAlereon 1y ago
  It looks like the top-end estimate is that the Fukushima disaster may have caused up to 500 additional total lifetime deaths from cancer. Roughly 23,000 people per year died of diseases attributed to coal power plants in the United States alone from 1999-2020. Edit: Changed "linked to" to "attributed to", because this is the estimated count of people who would not have died of disease if coal power plants were not running.
  - pfdietz 1y ago
    500 deaths at $12M per life is $6B. This is a small fraction of the total cost of Fukushima. People say LNT overestimates deaths, but what they don't realize is that even if you take LNT at face value the cost of deaths from a nuclear accident isn't really that high. A regulatory regime where reactor operators that have accidents are charged the inferred cost of the expected deaths could work.
- chairmansteve 1y ago
  Yes, If there were 20x nuclear power stations, there would probably have been 20x Fukushima scale incidents. Murphy's law is real...
  - eru 1y ago
    Fatalities per Joule of generated electricity is extremely low for nuclear power, even if you add not just Fukushima but also Chernobyl. So if you'd scale up, and keep that level of safety, it would be fine. Even less safety would be fine. After all, we accept much less safety in eg natural gas or even solar power. (Solar power is extremely safe once running, but if you look at casualties over the lifecycle, you get a few people falling off roofs when installing residential solar power. It's a very small number, but nuclear is so safe, that the roof-fall incidents of solar are a big number by comparison.)
bryanlarsen 1y ago
The regulatory costs of nuclear are mostly occurred in the design phase. Those costs are sunk and mostly irrelevant for new builds of old designs. The fact that old designs like the AP1000 are crazy expensive to build has a lot more to do with the fact that the US sucks at building mega projects than anything else.
- dalyons 1y ago
  It’s not just the US that sucks at mega projects. It’s everywhere that’s not china.
  - bryanlarsen 1y ago
    Other countries are better at building particular types of mega projects. Some are better at transit, others are better at building tunnels, others are better at building massive ships, et cetera. But in regards to nuclear, I believe you're right.
- fragmede 1y ago
  Interestingly, one of the reasons the design phase for nuclear is so onerous is the sheer amount of red tape involved due to compliance and other regulatory reasons. You wanna know something funny? You know what's really good at generating piles of convincing sounding bullshit that it's possible no one even actually reads, and looks like it's totally going to insert fuel rods into the nuclear power industry? LLMs!
  - herewulf 1y ago
    This will definitely make the nuclear industry perceptibly safer. How soon can we start?! /s
    - eru 1y ago
      Nuclear power is arguably way too safe.
- 1y ago
ViewTrick1002 1y ago
The American nuclear industry was collapsing due to spiraling costs before TMI happened. This ”before regulations” time period seems to be made up on feelings about a rosy picture of the past rather than actual data.
- pfdietz 1y ago
  It wasn't just spiraling costs, but also the collapse in the steady 7%/year growth in electrical energy demand. Without transparency on demand growth, very long term investments become risky (a risk reflected in the bankruptcy of WPPSS). The passage of PURPA in 1978 also didn't help with this as it allowed a flood of non-utility generation onto the grid, helping soak up what demand growth there was.
- eru 1y ago
  Yes, regulations started tightening before TMI. > This ”before regulations” time period seems to be made up on feelings about a rosy picture of the past rather than actual data. No, we have data about costs in those earlier times, and we know what regulations came in when.
  - ViewTrick1002 1y ago
    Given the cleanup costs of the early nuclear program maybe they learned a thing or two preventing the externalization of costs? DOE report: Cost to finish cleaning up Hanford site could exceed $589 billion https://www.ans.org/news/2025-04-17/article-6942/doe-report-cost-to-finish-cleaning-up-hanford-site-could-exceed-589-billion/ https://www.ans.org/news/2025-04-17/article-6942/doe-report-... Sellafield cleanup cost rises to £136bn amid tensions with Treasury https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/23/sellafield-cleanup-cost-136bn-national-audit-office https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/23/sellafield-...
ericd 1y ago
I'm mostly curious if there's any world in which coal beats at-scale solar production, or if it's totally moot. To be clear, I'm not rooting for that so much as looking for an ironclad case against. Nuclear is a whole can of worms because of its PR problems.

by eru 1y ago

juliankauai 1y ago

Except of course, Fukushima. Or any nuclear plant that gets hit by tsunami, earthquake, terrorism,or other natural disaster.

yobbo 1y ago
Were there any deaths from the Fukushima nuclear disaster? A large area was evacuated and "human costs" were great. But as I recall, no deaths from radiation.
- Gibbon1 1y ago
  People whose metabolic reserve is low often die when you stress them. I saw a study claiming 440 excess deaths from the Los Angeles fires. I'll make an assumption that permanently moving old and health impaired people from the Fukushima exclusion zone had a similar increase in mortality. And then a bit of looking leads me to this. "The evacuation itself also was not without severe consequences. The accident was in the winter, and the evacuation of 840 patients or elderly people in nursing homes and health-care facilities apparently resulted in 60 immediate deaths due to hypothermia, dehydration, trauma and deterioration of serious medical conditions (Tanigawa et al 2012) and upwards of 100 deaths in subsequent month" https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0952-4746/33/3/497 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0952-4746/33/3/49... Like the Grapes of Wrath where the family starts out for California and the grandparents both die on the way.
LarsAlereon 1y ago
It looks like the top-end estimate is that the Fukushima disaster may have caused up to 500 additional total lifetime deaths from cancer. Roughly 23,000 people per year died of diseases attributed to coal power plants in the United States alone from 1999-2020. Edit: Changed "linked to" to "attributed to", because this is the estimated count of people who would not have died of disease if coal power plants were not running.
- pfdietz 1y ago
  500 deaths at $12M per life is $6B. This is a small fraction of the total cost of Fukushima. People say LNT overestimates deaths, but what they don't realize is that even if you take LNT at face value the cost of deaths from a nuclear accident isn't really that high. A regulatory regime where reactor operators that have accidents are charged the inferred cost of the expected deaths could work.
chairmansteve 1y ago
Yes, If there were 20x nuclear power stations, there would probably have been 20x Fukushima scale incidents. Murphy's law is real...
- eru 1y ago
  Fatalities per Joule of generated electricity is extremely low for nuclear power, even if you add not just Fukushima but also Chernobyl. So if you'd scale up, and keep that level of safety, it would be fine. Even less safety would be fine. After all, we accept much less safety in eg natural gas or even solar power. (Solar power is extremely safe once running, but if you look at casualties over the lifecycle, you get a few people falling off roofs when installing residential solar power. It's a very small number, but nuclear is so safe, that the roof-fall incidents of solar are a big number by comparison.)

bryanlarsen 1y ago

The regulatory costs of nuclear are mostly occurred in the design phase. Those costs are sunk and mostly irrelevant for new builds of old designs. The fact that old designs like the AP1000 are crazy expensive to build has a lot more to do with the fact that the US sucks at building mega projects than anything else.

dalyons 1y ago
It’s not just the US that sucks at mega projects. It’s everywhere that’s not china.
- bryanlarsen 1y ago
  Other countries are better at building particular types of mega projects. Some are better at transit, others are better at building tunnels, others are better at building massive ships, et cetera. But in regards to nuclear, I believe you're right.
fragmede 1y ago
Interestingly, one of the reasons the design phase for nuclear is so onerous is the sheer amount of red tape involved due to compliance and other regulatory reasons. You wanna know something funny? You know what's really good at generating piles of convincing sounding bullshit that it's possible no one even actually reads, and looks like it's totally going to insert fuel rods into the nuclear power industry? LLMs!
- herewulf 1y ago
  This will definitely make the nuclear industry perceptibly safer. How soon can we start?! /s
  - eru 1y ago
    Nuclear power is arguably way too safe.
1y ago

ViewTrick1002 1y ago

The American nuclear industry was collapsing due to spiraling costs before TMI happened. This ”before regulations” time period seems to be made up on feelings about a rosy picture of the past rather than actual data.

pfdietz 1y ago
It wasn't just spiraling costs, but also the collapse in the steady 7%/year growth in electrical energy demand. Without transparency on demand growth, very long term investments become risky (a risk reflected in the bankruptcy of WPPSS). The passage of PURPA in 1978 also didn't help with this as it allowed a flood of non-utility generation onto the grid, helping soak up what demand growth there was.
eru 1y ago
Yes, regulations started tightening before TMI. > This ”before regulations” time period seems to be made up on feelings about a rosy picture of the past rather than actual data. No, we have data about costs in those earlier times, and we know what regulations came in when.
- ViewTrick1002 1y ago
  Given the cleanup costs of the early nuclear program maybe they learned a thing or two preventing the externalization of costs? DOE report: Cost to finish cleaning up Hanford site could exceed $589 billion https://www.ans.org/news/2025-04-17/article-6942/doe-report-cost-to-finish-cleaning-up-hanford-site-could-exceed-589-billion/ https://www.ans.org/news/2025-04-17/article-6942/doe-report-... Sellafield cleanup cost rises to £136bn amid tensions with Treasury https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/23/sellafield-cleanup-cost-136bn-national-audit-office https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/23/sellafield-...

ericd 1y ago

I'm mostly curious if there's any world in which coal beats at-scale solar production, or if it's totally moot. To be clear, I'm not rooting for that so much as looking for an ironclad case against. Nuclear is a whole can of worms because of its PR problems.