Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#201

Post by azurezyq » Sun, May 22, 2022, 5:14 AM UTC

charlieyu1 wrote: post #193

CyanBird wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's not true. For example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiyang_Nuclear_Power_Plant

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#202

Post by runarberg » Sun, May 22, 2022, 5:16 AM UTC

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'.

No, the math doesn’t add up. The most recent reactor to open in France was in 2002. In the last 30 years France has opened a total of 5 new reactors with 7.300 MW of nuclear energy capacity (not subtracting the ~3.500 MW it decommissioned in the same period). In the same period Germany has closed 17 reactors with total capacity of around 18.000 MW (assuming I tallied correctly).

So unless France has significantly changed their energy production for their domestic usage (or reduced their energy consumption by a lot), this myth is simply false. Germany is not replacing their domestic nuclear energy with France’s.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#203

Post by RealityVoid » Sun, May 22, 2022, 5:20 AM UTC

bamboozled wrote: post #196

maccam94 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

Yes. It would just be hard to persuade my girlfriend.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#204

Post by jhgb » Sun, May 22, 2022, 5:20 AM UTC

replygirl wrote: post #169

jeffbee wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

$10 billion for a gigawatt of the cleanest, safest, most energy-dense, most thermally efficient, and most reliable power you can find vs $4 billion for a gigawatt wind farm that takes up 100-1000x the land, always has a few % of its installed capacity down for maintenance, and doesn't provide predictable output unless you mine about half a million pounds of lithium

> that takes up 100-1000x the land

Practically irrelevant unless you're Singapore or the like.

> always has a few % of its installed capacity down for maintenance

That's true for a nuclear power plant fleet as well. There's always some downtime for maintenance and/or refueling (although usually you prefer to do both at the same time, sometimes unplanned outages are still a thing).

> and doesn't provide predictable output unless you mine about half a million pounds of lithium

Nonsense. Why would wind power plants require any lithium?

BTW in my country, $10B are close to providing 1 GW in average solar PV power output -- that is, capacity-factor-adjusted -- and it would have been more than 1 GW of average output if it weren't for our terrible PV capacity factor, so other countries fare much better. But even that would be on par with your 1 GW reactor (since that is slightly below 1 GW on average due to its own capacity factor). Yet PV costs keep decreasing year by year while reactor costs are increasing. The future will be very interesting...

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#205

Post by onion2k » Sun, May 22, 2022, 5:22 AM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #178

Maursault wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except, it was never the regulations. A nuclear power plant costs between $6B - $9B to build, before it generates any electricity, that is just the construction cost these days for a 1100MW plant Regulatory costs for a nuclear power plant will range between $7M - $15M annually. Do the math: it is definitely not the regulations. Any time someone complains about regulations, you know there is a Republican agenda. We ne…

> 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…

Why? Why not $20M or at the absolute worse $200M?

I feel like if you need to ask a question like "Why can't this thing be built for $20m, or 0.03% of the cited $6bn cost?" then you don't understand the problem well enough.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#206

Post by varajelle » Sun, May 22, 2022, 5:24 AM UTC

stkdump wrote: post #186

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…

So, by how much did Germany increase its carbon output during the nuclear shutdown? Hint: it didn't. It went from 14.8 to 7.7 tons/capita. You can always argue that it could have decreased faster by keeping nuclear plants online. But please don't believe the headlines of opinion makers without looking at the actual data.

In the same period, France went from 10 to 4.2 t/capita

(Source: https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/germany?country=DEU~F... )

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#207

Post by pojzon » Sun, May 22, 2022, 5:25 AM UTC

Its stagnant because public opinion has been scared with stories of Fukushima and Chernobyl.

Ppl dont understand that we can build reactors that not only can be powered up bu old nuclear waste but also are physically impossible to explode.

But yea.. lets subsidize coal and oil industries more putting one more nail to humanity coffin.

Corrupt politicians and stupid ppl voting for them are the issue, like always.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#208

Post by DeathArrow » Sun, May 22, 2022, 5:27 AM UTC

>Why is the Nuclear Power Industry Stagnant?

Regulations. Lack of investments. Lack of scale. Scare mongering. Lack of research.

After 60' not much money went into research for nuclear power. While solar power, betteries etc. become much cheaper due to a huge stream of money flowing into research for that area. If comparable sums would be used for research into nuclear power, probably the power plants would be cheaper and nuclear energy would be cheaper to produce.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#209

Post by jillesvangurp » Sun, May 22, 2022, 5:29 AM UTC

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…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany

Actually, Germany did not have a long term increase in coal/gas due to the nuclear shut down but a decrease. Coal has been in a slow but steady decline in Germany (mainly due to cost); which is on track to decline all the way to 0 as Germany is committing to getting rid of coal based production completely by 2035 or so. Gas production did grow but mainly to offset declines in coal. And even there you might argue Recent events in the Ukraine are cutting off cheap Russian supply of both coal and gas, so that looks like it might actually accelerate decarbonization and short term raise the ambition levels even more.

The thing that grew absolutely massively in the same period was wind and solar. Vastly more capacity of the latter was added than ever existed in nuclear form. It now dwarfs everything else in the German market. All without blackouts BTW.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#210

Post by mdp2021 » Sun, May 22, 2022, 5:29 AM UTC

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'.

> no longer countries

Well, no. The entities united in the European Union are still Countries - Sovereign States, "governments over permanent populations in defined territories enabled to relate with peers, entering as part of the international community after recognition from at least one peer". They have embassies and deal with embassies.

The distinction you are trying to convey, allegedly changing the scenario in energy trade, is not clear.