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Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

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Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#221

Post by jillesvangurp »

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…

Well, the article makes a fine point that that regulatory hell is the logical consequence of real life incidents with nuclear. Either way, it's part of the cost equation. Deregulating nuclear is not something that is very likely to happen.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#222

Post by jhgb »

mdp2021 wrote: post #220
jhgb wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ou…

> Practically irrelevant unless you're Singapore or the like No. Very many Countries have very dense territories, and not much land naturally destinable to that kind of degradation.

And many do not. So? Considering that you want to build very large grids to smooth over your generation (my country is a part of a synchronous grid supplying almost half a billion people with electricity), it's very hard to argue with "but where will we put these things?", because in almost all cases you will find a place.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#223

Post by cnlevy »

LegitShady wrote: post #141
nine_k wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any governmental agency is formally in service of the public good. Are they doing a reasonable job of that?

> in service of the public good. being in service of the public good is not offering a service. Their job is to regulate industry, not offer it a service. If you want a service you hire someone to fulfill it. The US government created the 'service' but not for industry, but for the regulation of industry. The 'service' isn't offered to industry for the good of industry. It's the opposite of a normal understanding of…

At home, I have a water pressure regulator. It came welded shut by the manufacturer because, no water flowing at all means no risk of overpressure at all.

Regulation doesn't means only hindering the industry, but accompanying its development safely through overseeing.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#224

Post by RealityVoid »

pg_bot wrote: post #64

I will start this off by saying I am very pro nuclear. However, I think it is likely that the last nuclear power plant to be built in the United States will be built in the next 5-10 years. Looking at the trajectory of renewables and energy storage it seems that every other method of generating power will slowly be priced out of existence. Given the politics (fission) and uncertainty (fusion) of nuclear, I think it i…

I have nothing against solar, except I am not persuaded by its promise. Would like for it to be able to deliver all that it promises. But right now, you have diminishing output as panels age, you don't have a storage solution that works at scale, you will have a large volume of panel waste at the end of panel lifetime. I seriously doubt even the average life time of a solar panel will be enough. I just looked up some numbers and apparently the embodied energy of a kilowatt installed panel is 3700 kw. One kilowatt will, apparently, produce on average 850kw per year (again, looked it up online, if you have better figures, please!). This means you need to run your panel for 4 years, assuming you use all the power produced in a meaningful way, in order to break even with 1 solar panel.

I simply don't see how we can decarbonize at this rate. Now with residential panels, that's for sure.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#225

Post by Meph504 »

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 takes billions to stand up one of these plants, and decades for the projects to pay for themselves with a nearly a 38% projects failing to be completed. And let's not forget that we haven't really ever built a nuclear plant (outside of academic or the military) that hasn't been double if not triple the estimated cost.

And the article is a bit misleading in that, sure there has been new permits, for new plants, but there are several plants being added on to most notable Vogtle which has been for the last 10 years building 2 new generation units. they are currently some $15 billion dollars over budget. and still not fully operational.

And attempting to building nuclear plants in N.C. and Georgia, bankrupted Shaw, and Westinghouse in 2008-20013.

it honestly seems that it is an unappealing investment, that only applies to those that look at profits over decades not quarters and are willing to gamble billions on projects that nearly 1 in 3 fail.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#226

Post by jhgb »

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 ?

I'd like to live near any power plant other than a coal-burning or biomass-burning one.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#227

Post by mdp2021 »

epistasis wrote: post #175
replygirl wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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

These points are either inaccurate or irrelevant We can not build nuclear at $10/GW, that's a fantasy. The use of the land is quite different too. When a wind farm "uses" 100x-1000x the land (and I am not accepting those numbers, just quoting you), that land is still available for other uses. The fraction of "used" land is so neglible as to not matter at all. So to discuss it in the same terms as a reactor doesn't ma…

> land is still available for other uses

How many uses are there that exclude prolonged presence of living things?

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#228

Post by jhgb »

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'.

> are no longer countries, but states in the Eurozone

1) All countries are states.

2) EU countries are still countries.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#229

Post by oceanplexian »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #209
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 decli…

> Recent events in the Ukraine are cutting off cheap Russian supply of both coal and gas

This is not the impression I have gotten from recent events.

The reason Germany hasn’t experienced blackouts is because they are funding the Russian Federation’s war in Ukraine in exchange for energy. Germany has advocated for the continued purchase of Russian gas and has pushed back against the EU admitting Ukraine to the union. It’s obvious that the decarbonization had not succeeded in solving their need for base load power, in fact you could argue that their denuclearization is the very reason Russia has so much leverage in the situation. So while they may be saving the planet, this is a great example of a government missing the forest for the trees.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#230

Post by jillesvangurp »

DeathArrow wrote: post #208

>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 cheape…

The article covers this; in excruciating detail. The regulations add to the cost but even without that it would be costly. And a lot of the regulations have come from actual real life incidents. It's not like nuclear operators would be able to cut lots of corners on safety without regulations.

Solar and wind definitely benefited from lots of government support. Just like nuclear did back in the day. Unlike nuclear, wind and solar are now commercially viable even without subsidies.

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