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Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

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Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#271

Post by systemvoltage »

onion2k wrote: post #219
systemvoltage wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is defeatism. Someone asked that question and is building 100x cheaper rockets. Soon to be 1000x cheaper. Literally everything needs to be questioned. We can do that with humbleness and without arrogance. Last I checked, we are on a tech forum known for starting companies.

Someone asked that question and is building 100x cheaper rockets. Soon to be 1000x cheaper. They got there by solving some hard problems over multiple decades by understanding the domain and the difficulties in it. They didn't start by saying "Why aren't rockets 1000* cheaper?" They started by saying "What happens if we solve these problems?" and ended up with cheaper rockets. In another domain they might have had a…

I can agree with that but also SpaceX absolutely started with the question "Why aren't rockets cheaper". Thus followed resuability with an question "Why are we building single use Rockets?". Either way, we should question all of this. The entire house of Nuclear industry is probably filled with bureacratic termites.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#272

Post by anm89 »

Drblessing wrote: post #243
anm89 wrote: post #156

Simple, 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?

In my totally college graduate circle of ~30 yr old friends, amongst the females, most of whom work white collar jobs, 90%+

Goop is worth billions. People eat this stuff up.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#273

Post by cycomanic »

systemvoltage wrote: post #103
acidburnNSA wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's some recent news: China's announced that they're building 4 more Westinghouse AP1000 PWRs. They'll use the Chinese supply chain, but it's still a big win for W. https://info.westinghousenuclear.com/news/four-westinghouse-... I really wish we could get a few more orders in the USA so that we could leverage the learning and supply chain being so painfully built in Georgia for the AP1000s there.

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.

So do we just wave a magic wand and suddenly nuclear power does not cost anything. The article clearly laid out the cost and why even with deregulation LWRs are not cost competitive (while other technology is just not there yet). Or is your argument the government should even heavier subsidise nuclear to make electricity cost nothing? But why electricity and not e.g. housing?

Realistically the quickest way to get to the stage where you don't need to think about your electricity usage is put a solar installation on your roof + battery. Now you have to invest up front (and it might not even be a good investment), but it shows that nothing comes for free.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#274

Post by inglor_cz »

cycomanic wrote: post #242
systemvoltage wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 give…

Uh, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25

In that case, the problem wasn't conversion units, but race conditions. Anyway, three people died because the radiation therapy unit burnt them with lethal doses of radiation, because of a software error.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#275

Post by seydor »

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…

what is the yield of solarwind in germany though? looking at their energy stats , it is underutilized

https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&...

https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/installed_power/chart....

https://sminpowergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Renewa...

and what happens to that massive coal+gas infrastructure?Apparently , wind+solar don't work at night and you will always need the same level of coal+gas+oil

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#276

Post by dan-robertson »

runarberg wrote: post #194
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.

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 i…

I don’t know any of the details and it is plausible to me that there might be a higher cancer rate. But maybe the mesothelioma was due to actual asbestos? That also seems plausible to me.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#277

Post by dsnr »

croes wrote: post #263
ulfw wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany has one of the highest electricity costs on the planet. That leads to reduction of use (as people just can't afford it) and this is before the Russian corrupt cheap gas deals. Who knows what it'll look like with higher gas and oil prices.

That would be a strange corruption that causes cheap gas

So you really can’t see how a corrupt government can hinder the development of alternative energy sources in favor of dirty deals from which they profit themselves?

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#278

Post by dsnr »

croes wrote: post #261
oceanplexian wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

Gas has more use cases than just electricity. These can't easily be replaced by nuclear power.

Actually, gas heating can _easily_ be replaced with heat pumps assuming cheap electricity is provided.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#279

Post by inglor_cz »

jhgb wrote: post #233
mdp2021 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have stated that land use is «practically irrelevant» with the exception of «Singapore or the like». It is not.

It is practically irrelevant in the sense that you can virtually always find an acceptable place to put a wind turbine in in a several hundred kilometer radius. While there are places with very densely populated territories, there are no places with territories that are very densely populated over hundreds of thousands of square kilometers.

"an acceptable place"

Look at the situation in Germany. "An" acceptable place, yes, but given how many of the Windräder you need, finding enough such places is a different task, because many less populated places are wildlife refuges.

And yes, German wind power is expanding into old growth forests and mountains, which provokes embittered fights with classical nature protectionists who do not want to allow such damage to the last remnants of preserved landscape. The entire "do we need to protect local vulnerable species or do we have to sacrifice them to reduce global climate change by 0.1 per cent" debate is very bitter and as the Green party leans towards the latter, it may yet lead to emergence of an anti-Green pro-Naturschutz movement, which, in all likelihood, would be co-opted by the far right.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#280

Post by cycomanic »

DennisP wrote: post #56
sb057 wrote: post #31

The fact that nuclear power regulators are routinely anti-nuclear power probably isn't helping things. https://www.powermag.com/blog/former-nuclear-leaders-say-no-... >Dr. Greg Jaczko, former Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Prof. Wolfgang Renneberg, former Head of the Reactor Safety, Radiation Protection and Nuclear Waste, Federal Environment Ministry, Germany Dr. Bernard Laponche, former Director…

A few years ago I got to sit in a meeting between reps from a bunch of GenIV reactor startups, and a former chair of the NRC (not Jaczko). The reactor people said their main problem was that the NRC required near-complete blueprints before they would even look at a design. Getting to that point took several hundred million dollars. Then the NRC would give a flat yes or no. If no then you were out of business. That's…

So if I want to build a house I have to come to the building authority with blueprints and ask if that building design is OK. I can't just ask step by step: is it OK if I use these walls, these windows... And build up my house like that.

Why would that be different for a nuclear regulatory body? Moreover, they are designing new reactor technology much more complex and less understood than a house. I imagine for safety assessments one would need to look at the whole design, just look at the example on cable trunks given in the article.

I wonder what the startups would say if the agency would approve their first steps, but then disapprove the full blueprints, because even though the steps made sense the whole does not meet requirements. Or do they want guarantees?

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