Because nobody wants it in their backyard
Sounds pretty cool to me tbh, i'll hookup my hashing machines
Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?
241–250 of 672 posts
Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?
#242Earlier 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…
You're mixing up the matters and has gotten it backwards. The industry has been regulated to teeth after scare mongering by environmentalists post Chernobyl/3-mile-island. It has wiped out any hopes for private industry to build and hope to bring down costs by economies of scale. Too much regulation leads to death of economies of scale. If software was regulated like nuclear power, say because of hypothetical AI risk…
Seriously did nobody read the article?! Is this reddit or Slashdot?! The article goes through the calculations, it shows that even with deregulation LWRs would not be competitive. It says that other designs might be, if they ever get off the ground.
And let's not discuss the fact that regulation affects many markets which work perfectly fine and when lifes depend on it they should be. I'd rather not that the CRT gives me a deadline dose of radiation because the programmer was playing fast and loose with his unit conversions.
Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?
#243Simple, because we have a society who's worldview involves believing that quantum energy from crystals heals them and the alignment of the planets determines their fate. And they have decided that nuclear is scary. Honestly we get what we deserve.
Okay how many people really believe in that stuff?
Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?
#244It 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 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…
> There is a huge problem, and it isn't the regulations. Every new plant design is more expensive than the last. Make cheaper nuclear plants. It is that simple. Scale it down or scale it up, I don't know, but do something other than allow it to be unprofitable and keep bitching about regulations... rather than design a plant that has a sane build and operating cost,
Part of the problem here is encapsulated in "every new plant design". What you aren't saying is that practically every new plant is a new design.
There are multiple reasons for this. One is a bit of a chicken and egg issue: because starting up new nuclear power projects is rare, it has probably been quite a few years since the last time someone started one. So the last plans you used probably need a serious update. Another is NIMBYism that takes the firm of objections thrown up arbitrarily that require changes to be made.
The answer is as you suggested, to scale the plant size down, and the number of them up: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor
Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?
#245Earlier 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…
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.
Probably the same reason that SpaceX was able to build human rated orbital rockets with a marginal cost that’s a fraction of what came before.
The incumbents are corrupt, the regulations are overbearing and bloated, the government has no interest in solving the problem. Fortunately, it doesn’t really matter what we think, the Chinese will continue to advance and deploy the nuclear state-of-the-art and become an energy superpower, while the US and Europe debate the issue until we’re made irrelevant.
Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article on the site about solar is equally bad. Both are full of lots of good information but then have some key misunderstandings. The solar article doesn't acknowledge that installing a solar requires installing a gas peaker plant on the grid as well. [1] Although solar certainly reduces carbon emissions (the gas peaker plants only runs some of the time), the result is that the cost to the grid, rather than bei…
Gas peaker plants are needed for nuclear just as much. Generally the article is looking at the most favourable conditions for the technology, e.g. only considering OCC and not interest cost for building and decommissioning of nuclear plants.
You're going to have to source this because there's been absolutely no need for gas plants in the two cities I've lived in that were both powdered by nuclear in Europe.
Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.…
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Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the points that the article brings up is that a nuclear power plant takes around ten years to build, and that's ignoring the political red tape that you mentioned which would add on another 5+ years, plus the huge upfront capex costs. With the energy industry changing so rapidly at the moment, that's a huge risk for anyone wanting to invest. In that ten years for construction its likely that battery, solar, an…
> the only future for nuclear is going to be small, cheaper reactors that are quick to construct But even those will be nonstarters unless the regulatory environment is fixed. Nuclear has always been held to much, much stricter standards than any other energy source, for no good reason.
That's a myth. Regulatory requirements for all large scale power generation have to deal with very similar regulatory requirements, which typically scales with size of the project. In fact wind had likely to deal with more restrictions than nuclear (largely to protect the nuclear investments of operators), let's not even talk about certain housing communities not allowing rooftop solar for aesthetic reasons.
Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the points that the article brings up is that a nuclear power plant takes around ten years to build, and that's ignoring the political red tape that you mentioned which would add on another 5+ years, plus the huge upfront capex costs. With the energy industry changing so rapidly at the moment, that's a huge risk for anyone wanting to invest. In that ten years for construction its likely that battery, solar, an…
> the only future for nuclear is going to be small, cheaper reactors that are quick to construct But even those will be nonstarters unless the regulatory environment is fixed. Nuclear has always been held to much, much stricter standards than any other energy source, for no good reason.
> > the only future for nuclear is going to be small, cheaper reactors that are quick to construct
> But even those will be nonstarters unless the regulatory environment is fixed. Nuclear has always been held to much, much stricter standards than any other energy source, for no good reason.
The stricter standards are addressable. What's missing from the above is the word "standardized". As it is, practically every large reactor built is a custom implementation. Smaller, cheaper, standardized reactors that are built in a dedicated facility (I'm not sure "factory" is quite right) and then shipped to the installation site should fix that problem.
Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?
#250It 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…
If it's just about regulation why hasn't China (or anyone) broken the stagnation? It's unwarranted regulations in every country?