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Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

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Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#191

Post by stkdump »

neilwilson wrote: post #185
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…

"Uh...Germany's actually recarbonized by shutting down their nuclear" Germany outsourced their nuclear to France. Remember that Germany and France are no longer countries, but states in the Eurozone within the wider European Union. It's the same effect as, say, New Mexico exporting nuclear power to California and California then calling itself 'nuclear free'.

Germany is still a net exporter of electricity. France benefits from that, because in recent years they had to shut down their nuclear plants during heatwaves, when the rivers they use to cool them got too warm. I guess that will only get more frequent in the future.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#192

Post by systemvoltage »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #187
systemvoltage wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A nuclear power plant costs between $6B - $9B to build Why? Why not $20M or at the absolute worse $200M? > Regulatory costs for a nuclear power plant will range between $7M - $15M annually. This is disenginous number. Every single supplier, compliance, proposal, EVERYTHING about nuclear is regulated. Behind this $7M-$15M on paper costs, lies the true cost of regulations: $6B-$9B. > The money is what is important. Y…

So you're saying that if we removed the regulation and built cheap reactors each reactor might cost -1 billion dollars to construct? Sign me up!

I would even question why construction costs so much in US vs. say China. It is all entirely full of regulations. Not labor. Material costs are probably minscule % if you scoure the entire supply chain for regulations.

The discussion whether certain regulations (OSHA) are needed or not is an entirely different conversation, but having worked on large government/military contracts ($1B+); I have seen the shitshow with my own eyes and mind.

Gross incompetence of Gov (and its contractors) x Regulatory Capture x Lack of Innovation = Current dysfunction.

I am not saying China is the role model for safety regulations, but we need to take a deep look at what's necessary and what's not.

SpaceX will make reusable rockets a few orders of magnitude cheaper than anything NASA has produced. And current NASA administration has been forthcoming in working with private industry (SpaceX, BO, Rocketlab, Firefly, etc.). Good.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#193

Post by charlieyu1 »

CyanBird wrote: post #168
Maursault wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has nothing to do with economics Nuclear power is not profitable. It has nothing to do with regulation and everything to do with economics. If nuclear power were profitable, you could not stop it. If nuclear power were profitable, the regulations would change with a quickness, because motivated investors remove any and all roadblocks to their money. If it wasn't for the absurdly bad economics, bad track record p…

> Make nuclear power profitable I mean, I would like to say that "people have made them profitable" "but then they blew up" But I would be being too hyperbolic, as I would not say per se that the rmbk reactors where all that profitable at the time, tho they were certainly cheap tho But yeah, issue with nuclear is a cursed triad of Having nuclear reactors be cheap Having nuclear reactors be on schedule Having nuclear…

And China isn’t building major nuclear plants anywhere near the capital. All on southeast.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#194

Post by runarberg »

maccam94 wrote: post #172
kyrra wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I think the root cause here is that people are afraid to live near nuclear plants, and would get mad at their political representatives if they got built in their area. Making these limits more stringent makes it look like the politicians are forcing the plants to be safer, when really they are just blocking the plants from being built in their districts at all.

I’m not an expert but I feel like there is an actual merit behind these regulations. I mean I just did a quick google for "Hanford Cancer Rate" and immediately see stuff like:

> study shows that Hanford workers were 11 times more likely to develop mesothelioma, a cancer of the lungs strongly tied to asbestos exposure, than in the general population.

I know that Hanford was an exceptionally bad Nuclear Plant, but it is also a plant which was build in the laxer regulatory environment of the military with an excuse that appeals to "national security". But that is kind of the point though, without the regulations I would expect these plants to be at least as bad as Hanford.

This rhetoric about nuclear power plants being to heavily regulated is starting to feel a bit conspiratorial.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#195

Post by thayne »

It wasn't that long ago that wind and electric weren't economically viable sources of energy. But after putting a lot of effort into making them more efficient they are now somewhat practical. As far as I know, similar levels of research and innovation haven't happened for nuclear fission. At least not yet.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#196

Post by bamboozled »

maccam94 wrote: post #172
kyrra wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I think the root cause here is that people are afraid to live near nuclear plants, and would get mad at their political representatives if they got built in their area. Making these limits more stringent makes it look like the politicians are forcing the plants to be safer, when really they are just blocking the plants from being built in their districts at all.

Would you like to live near one ?

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#197

Post by acidburnNSA »

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?

Yeah uranium can power the entire world for about as long as the sun will run. This requires breeder reactors, which were first proven in 1952 at the EBR-1 in Idaho.

https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-10-28-nuclear-energy-is-...

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#198

Post by roenxi »

stkdump wrote: post #191
neilwilson wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Uh...Germany's actually recarbonized by shutting down their nuclear" Germany outsourced their nuclear to France. Remember that Germany and France are no longer countries, but states in the Eurozone within the wider European Union. It's the same effect as, say, New Mexico exporting nuclear power to California and California then calling itself 'nuclear free'.

Germany is still a net exporter of electricity. France benefits from that, because in recent years they had to shut down their nuclear plants during heatwaves, when the rivers they use to cool them got too warm. I guess that will only get more frequent in the future.

> Germany is still a net exporter of electricity.

Very difficult to interpret that fact when dealing with renewable-heavy grids. Germany probably doesn't have a lot of control over when the energy is being generated - so it is entirely possible that they are exporting but still reliant on electricity imports - if power is being produced when it is not needed.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#199

Post by varajelle »

stkdump wrote: post #191
neilwilson wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Uh...Germany's actually recarbonized by shutting down their nuclear" Germany outsourced their nuclear to France. Remember that Germany and France are no longer countries, but states in the Eurozone within the wider European Union. It's the same effect as, say, New Mexico exporting nuclear power to California and California then calling itself 'nuclear free'.

Germany is still a net exporter of electricity. France benefits from that, because in recent years they had to shut down their nuclear plants during heatwaves, when the rivers they use to cool them got too warm. I guess that will only get more frequent in the future.

This is a funny argument against nuclear. Some nuclear reactor have to shut down for a few days to avoid heating the rivers is a big problem. But the solar panel being down more than half the time (night or clouds) and the wind turbine also being down depending on the wind in uncontrollable ways is Ok.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#200

Post by bsder »

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…

> It has nothing to do with economics, nuclear energy is stagnant because the industry is a regulatory hell.

Except that San Onofre just shut down because we couldn't engineer the water tubes in the system properly in the face of being irradiated.

The real problem is that we have poured orders of magnitude more subsidy at fossil fuels than we have at fission or fusion.

If it weren't for the fact that it can ride the semiconductors R&D gravy train, solar would be in the same bad shape as nuclear.

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