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Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

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Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#131

Post by pstuart »

uranium wrote: post #66

"Recently, places as diverse as Texas, California, Oklahoma/Iowa/Kansas/Nebraska (SPP), the UK, and Germany have rapidly decarbonized without nuclear." Uh...Germany's actually recarbonized by shutting down their nuclear [increasing coal and imported electricity to pick up the slack]. "The nuclear electricity production lost in Germany's phase-out was primarily replaced with coal electricity production and electricity…

I can understand reluctance to build more nukes, but Germany shutting down nukes that were already paid for and working seems crazy.

disclaimer: I'm pro nuke if we can do it right, a la LFTR/SMRs etc.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#132

Post by jeffbee »

JoeyBananas wrote: post #122

It has nothing to do with economics, nuclear energy is stagnant because the industry is a regulatory hell. From eia.gov: Of the 104 operating nuclear power reactors in the United States: The last construction permit for a nuclear power plant was issued in 1978 for Progress Energy Inc.'s Shearon Harris plant, near Raleigh, North Carolina. The last operating license for a nuclear power plant was issued in 1996 to the T…

These statements do not seem factual. Didn't the NRC issue a construction license for Virgil C. Summer units 2 and 3 in 2012? Which subsequently failed to be built despite spending 9 billion dollars, because companies like Westinghouse are structured solely for the purpose of robbing the American public blind.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#133

Post by robocat »

tuatoru wrote: post #101
robocat wrote: post #93

The article doesn’t include the word “baseload”, which is an important consideration. Utilities pay more for peaker capacity. For the same reason, market pricing regulations need to encouraging sources that provide a base amount of power despite weather conditions: network reliability and security of supply are valuable. (Let’s ignore Texas though). In New Zealand, we are dependent on seasonal rain for our hydro-powe…

While the governments' (plural, all the recent ones) car-centrism and lack of action on new energy are disapppointing ( so 20th century), I disagree for a couple of reasons. Main reason: end-user subsidies of any kind (whether for cars or for rooftop solar or $asset) are merely a transfer from poor taxpayers to high-income or wealthy people, those who own their homes or can afford to purchase the asset. They entrench…

Yeah, I mostly agree with your gist, although I feel you have straw-manned me with the points you brought up;)

> NZ doesn't actually have a lot of land suitable for solar that doesn't have higher-value uses

Do you have any references? I know somebody involved with a bid, and solar could heavily outbid farming ($ per hectare per annum) for the location they looked at. A solution only needs some land, not “a lot of land” as you put it, although there are constraints and objective function variables (hours of sunshine, nimby, high voltage network access, land value per hectare, , etcetera).

> rooftop solar

Expensive wasteful rooftop solar makes economic sense for some individuals, which really shows up the inefficiency of our electricity market design, since utility scale solar generation makes more economic sense in New Zealand. Government intervention would be useful if it fixes market failures.

> hydro operators don't need subsidies

Psychologically loaded point. An electricity market should be designed to price in long-term requirements (like security of supply, CO2 costs, network reliability), which could be thought of as cross-subsidisations. Of course, be very careful of perverse market incentives (law of unintended consequences). . . https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/540/handouts/french/unin... The government could invest in high-risk research, even if network generators/operators are freeloading, so long as it helps NZ much more than it costs, we all win.

Sometimes the government can take on risk, for example the broadband fibre rollout. I strongly disagreed with that at the time: the goal of technology literacy was a lie and the system looked to me like a subsidy to NetFlix et al. Although it happened to work out well during Covid lockdowns, and it looks like it will make financial sense to the government, and hopefully the social gains well outweigh the social losses.

Private markets can’t make long term investments if the cost of utility scale infrastructure is dropping too fast. This is a market failure that can be fixed by appropriate financial incentives (regulation or market design to pay for the long term gains to the country).

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#134

Post by ineedasername »

NIMBY, overregulation driven by FUD that's often funded by other entrenched energy interests, misguided do gooders that decades ago were worried about global warming (now climate change) who also hated nuclear because it's less environmentally friendly than renewable.

That last one is tragic. We could have a massively smaller carbon footprint right now if we'd gone big down that path, presuming we also dumped resources for research into alternative uses for spent fuel & safe long-term storage. Instead of buying an electric cars that right now are powered by fossil fuels producing electricity (potentially even less efficient if the energy still comes from coal) electric might have hit their "killer app" stage a few years ago. (I'll concede that battery tech might not have advanced any faster with cheaper clean electricity and so we might still be just as ICE dependent as we are now)

At this point nuclear might be moot. I'm not sure, honestly. But we seem to be approaching a tipping point where off-peak storage mechanisms for renewables are almost maturing enough for national-grid scale build outs. This would make the faster & cheaper build out of renewables (compared long expensive nuclear builds) more viable as replacements for plants that are currently needed for base load capacity, which is where nuclear's economic sweet spot is at. It takes a relatively longer time to ramp up/down the output of nuclear plants compared to others, and they have high overhead to begin with relative to others (natural gas plants that ramp down in off-hours don't have to pay for the gas they don't but) so while more flexible variable output nuclear plant designs are maturing they may be too late in the game. Right now the future for nuclear appears to be more niche applications. Relatively portable rapidly deployable units for instant infrastructure, for example. (I believe this is currently under research by US military)

Anyway, that's a bit of a digression. The TLDR is sociopolitical facts killed nuclear (caveat: China is going very big on nuclear, they still see value there) and we've now reach a point where the issue is moot(ish).

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#135

Post by lazide »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #121
systemvoltage wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to build hundreds of Nuclear Power Plants. Electricity should be so cheap, it’s not worth monitoring usage for homes. The fact that this hasn’t happened is a testament and an indictment of dysfunction in our society. I’ll turn into a single issue voter if any candidate for the President is pro-nuclear in a big way.

at current costs of fuel maybe power would be too cheap to meter, but is uranium really so abundant to meet demand? I thought I read there was only a couple hundred years supply, but maybe that was propaganda one way or another... I know it exists in seawater but is it easy to extract?

A couple hundred years of proven reserves, with massive deposits known but not proven. It’s never been worth doing more than scratching the surface.

If uranium was used much more, there are economic amounts that are filterable from seawater even.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#136

Post by nine_k »

LegitShady wrote: post #130
nine_k wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NRC's services don't necessarily need to be free. But they should be reasonable , both in fees, and in the process. They are a service run by government.

> They are a service They are not a service. They are a regulator. It's almost the opposite of a service.

Any governmental agency is formally in service of the public good.

Are they doing a reasonable job of that?

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#137

Post by nine_k »

pfdietz wrote: post #104
nine_k wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a known way to handle "nuclear waste": burn it in fast-neutron reactors [1]. The waste is mostly still uranium. The rest can still be burned, turning it into much less active isotopes and producing energy. Yes, these machines produce plutonium suitable for nuclear weapons. But plutonium is a perfectly good nuclear fuel, too, and the US already has nuclear weapons, longer than any other country. [1]: https://…

That only handles (some) actinides. It doesn't handle fission products, seven of which have very long half lives.

Still, much less to bury, and the resulting waste is much less active.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#138

Post by kyrra »

JoeyBananas wrote: post #122

It has nothing to do with economics, nuclear energy is stagnant because the industry is a regulatory hell. From eia.gov: Of the 104 operating nuclear power reactors in the United States: The last construction permit for a nuclear power plant was issued in 1978 for Progress Energy Inc.'s Shearon Harris plant, near Raleigh, North Carolina. The last operating license for a nuclear power plant was issued in 1996 to the T…

Not an expert here, but from a commentary piece from 2021:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/nuclear-regulatory-council-nrc-...

> In 1957 the internationally recommended limit for radiation exposure was about 15 times the natural background radiation that people absorb from rocks and cosmic rays. Without evidence of harm from exposures within the 1957 limits, the U.S. had by 1991 ratcheted its public limits down to less than a third of natural background radiation.

This is a common theme that the WSJ opinion pages push. Much of the regulation put out by Washington isn't about safety, but more about bureaucrats protecting themselves from every being too loose with regulation. It's rare, if ever, that a federal agency gets in trouble for having rules that are too strict. They do get blamed if something happens in an industry they regulate, and people scream that more regulation is needed.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#140

Post by pvarangot »

JoeyBananas wrote: post #122

It has nothing to do with economics, nuclear energy is stagnant because the industry is a regulatory hell. From eia.gov: Of the 104 operating nuclear power reactors in the United States: The last construction permit for a nuclear power plant was issued in 1978 for Progress Energy Inc.'s Shearon Harris plant, near Raleigh, North Carolina. The last operating license for a nuclear power plant was issued in 1996 to the T…

Considering how difficult it is to build just a house without the magical "pre approved plans" from the contracting agency or the realtors I don't even want to take a glimpse at nuclear regulatory code. If someone manages to build a new reactor we should also research how to create energy from lawsuits, because everyone in the country will sue them for absolutely every illness they get.
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