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Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

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Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#361

Post by jacquesm »

otter-rock wrote: post #355
jacquesm wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, I don't believe in magic or appeals to authority, I believe in physics and once you start bending the rules for one part who is to tell where it will stop. Having one leg too short won't be fixed by making the other one a little longer. The materials science requirements on nuclear reactor vessels are such that if the safety margins are so narrow that the specs are going to be even possible to be violated…

Ok, you obviously have zero interest in an actual discussion, lest it confront your completely fabricated "facts". So for anyone else who's genuinely interested in more than just pontificating their own bs, the "special teams" this person mocked, rather than asked about, can be learned about here: https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/regulatory/risk-informed.html

No, that's not how it works. See the FAA and many other institutions where commerce, one upmanship and all kinds of other considerations besides the actual work ended up trumping what should have been done in the first place. I don't think the nuclear power industry is immune to that sort of thing.

This kind of thinking is what brought down the spaceshuttle. Three Mile Island (US), Windscale (UK), Chernobyl (Then USSR, now Ukraine) and Fukushima (Japan) all had the very best teams assigned to their design, construction and operations and yet each of those had a major accident.

There isn't anything fabricated about these facts so you can extend your appeal to authority but I'm just not buying it: people will always be people and the day that you start bending the rules on the design requirements is the day that I bow out. Obviously that isn't going to move the needle but it is exactly why I don't trust the nuclear industry: way too much did not go according to plan even if it always was with the best of intentions. And that's before we get into non-proliferation, waste and other considerations.

Trust has to be earned.

Also, you should probably lay off the personal attacks.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#362

Post by otter-rock »

ncmncm wrote: post #343
otter-rock wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out-of-spec doesn't mean it can't work. It just means you have to redo the design using what's effectively a different part than you originally planned on.

What you are talking about here is called "normalizing deviance". We have had very bad experience with how that process plays out. It is particularly pernicious around safety.

That's not what it's called.

Imagine you write software for rabbit-mq. But then you get a requirements change to use zero-mq for whatever reason. Is that deviance? Have you normalized it? No, and no.

Deviance is when you're dropping messages in production when you shouldn't. Normalizing is when you ignore it because "it's usually fine".

You're probably thinking that my analogy doesn't work because changing software libraries is different than accepting an out of spec part. But why? If it's out of spec, it's a different part. You can make a spec around that part and design to it all the same. Just because it wasn't your first choice doesn't mean it's dangerous.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#363

Post by danielmarkbruce »

stingraycharles wrote: post #224
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"all else equal" is in there. He was trying to make a point - that flexibility is valuable. And it is valuable. All else equal you'd take more flexibility than less, especially since demand moves around a good amount.

But it isn’t flexibility we can control. It’s either fluctuations in supply which we need to absorb somehow, or it’s scaling down supply. The big differentiator is the flexibility to scale up supply when you need it, and it’s precisely this flexibility that’s missing.

It definitely can be controllable. Peakers exist, and are controlled. You say "scale down", someone who runs a peaker thinks "scale up", and they can do it pretty fast (minutes). And the lower the capex the better, it gets closer and closer to a free option.

Having a real option on producing electricity (or, almost anything where demand varies) is valuable to society.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#364

Post by otter-rock »

jacquesm wrote: post #361
otter-rock wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, you obviously have zero interest in an actual discussion, lest it confront your completely fabricated "facts". So for anyone else who's genuinely interested in more than just pontificating their own bs, the "special teams" this person mocked, rather than asked about, can be learned about here: https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/regulatory/risk-informed.html

No, that's not how it works. See the FAA and many other institutions where commerce, one upmanship and all kinds of other considerations besides the actual work ended up trumping what should have been done in the first place. I don't think the nuclear power industry is immune to that sort of thing. This kind of thinking is what brought down the spaceshuttle. Three Mile Island (US), Windscale (UK), Chernobyl (Then USS…

You said that engineers don't engineer things, you called the techniques I mentioned an appeal to authority because I also said who's practicing those techniques, and you keep repeating yourself about everything instead of interacting with what I've written. And now you're whining about a personal attack I didn't make. You took it personally because you're presenting your own opinions as facts.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#365

Post by ncmncm »

otter-rock wrote: post #362
ncmncm wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are talking about here is called "normalizing deviance". We have had very bad experience with how that process plays out. It is particularly pernicious around safety.

That's not what it's called. Imagine you write software for rabbit-mq. But then you get a requirements change to use zero-mq for whatever reason. Is that deviance? Have you normalized it? No, and no. Deviance is when you're dropping messages in production when you shouldn't. Normalizing is when you ignore it because "it's usually fine". You're probably thinking that my analogy doesn't work because changing software l…

Point is that it is arbitrarily hard to tell whether a response is adaptive. Maladaptive responses are much cheaper than (unmentioned) alternatives, so are systematically more attractive to management.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#367

Post by CryptoPunk »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #179
rob_c wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, well said. It's a shame the idiotic "green" movement after chernobyl is rather annoying that it has set energy production in developed nations back ~50 years and caused so much climate damage in the mean time... but hey 'radioactive waste is corporate greed maaannnn'.....

But the green movement was ultimately correct. They didn't know why and had nonsense arguments, but the fact is that "old nuclear" was developed with insufficient long-term safety. Fukushima showed that. What also seems true is that you can't trust a company to run them properly, no matter the regulations and audits. TEPCO showed that. From people I know who've dealt with the nuclear industry, there is a strong conte…

I think it stands to reason that nuclear power plant design and construction efficiency would have progressed far more quickly with continued construction of nuclear plants.

And the amount of fossil fuel usage that greater energy production from nuclear sources would have curbed would have saved thousands of lives via reduced air pollution, particularly from coal usage, without coming at the expense of high energy prices, that increase mortality among the poorest segments of the population, that simply capping energy usage would have brought about.

So I disagree the mainstream environmental movement, that opposed the nuclear industry, got it right. I think they got it totally wrong, as any populist movement, that is heavy on simple narratives and ideology, and light on science, is bound to be, when it weighs in on extremely complex large-scale issues.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#368

Post by otter-rock »

ncmncm wrote: post #365
otter-rock wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what it's called. Imagine you write software for rabbit-mq. But then you get a requirements change to use zero-mq for whatever reason. Is that deviance? Have you normalized it? No, and no. Deviance is when you're dropping messages in production when you shouldn't. Normalizing is when you ignore it because "it's usually fine". You're probably thinking that my analogy doesn't work because changing software l…

Point is that it is arbitrarily hard to tell whether a response is adaptive. Maladaptive responses are much cheaper than (unmentioned) alternatives, so are systematically more attractive to management.

So nuclear engineers just aren't allowed to do their jobs, and the safety requirements were never good enough to begin with.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#369

Post by Ericson2314 »

LatteLazy wrote: post #267
Ericson2314 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no non-depressing future where demand for electricity doesn't go way up as fossil fuel is phased out. An uncertainty is a shit situation we should work to prevent, not have a contingency plan for. This is where the Keynesian "socialization of investment" stuff comes in. Private markets get skiddish over change even when our economies are fully capable of dealing with the issues. Don't be held hostage to priv…

It's not so much that your points are wrong, as that they fail to see a bigger picture. When you say there is no no depressing future without increased electrical demand, that's true. But who guaranteed you a non depressing future? And the same was true in 1990, but we've made almost no progress to removing fossil fuels. So if you'd started nuclear projects then, you'd be just coming online. And have no new customers…

> But who guaranteed you a non depressing future?

Why contingency plan?

Your USSR analogy is apt but I think it makes my case. The USSR was planning the steel production and its uses. Electricity is the single most useful good with the most diverse downstream uses. I am not saying we should command all the uses of the electricity! But command-economying the electricity production itself is the a no-brainer.

One 6m and then 7m and then 8m all the way up to 20m. that is building increasingly bigger reactors with an efficient supply chain.

You're over-using markets and doing so in a circular way with your argument. You are confusing actual uncertainty around the world with the uncertainty that comes from the decentralized, loosely coordinate market-governance mechanism itself!

Some things are uncertain, and market are really great for small-scale experiments or "annealing" society. But or the brain-dead obvious things like "we need tons more electricity, rail, and dense housing ASAP!" there is no reason to rely on markets.

A good society has a socialist foundation and capitalist superstructure: guarantee the basics, but have fun with the rest. That is already how rich people enjoy capitalism (wealthy family entrepreneurs are not so leveraged), let's just scale that out to everyone. We can't all be top X% wealth, but we can all live with less uncertainty.

Re: Why are nuclear power construction costs so high?

#370

Post by ncmncm »

MertsA wrote: post #349
spoonjim wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can’t you just dump radioactive uranium into the bottom of the ocean? Can’t imagine it would do much damage with all of the water around it.

If you vitrified it first honestly it'd probably be totally fine. An arguably better plan is just get serious about reprocessing and work towards cleaner processes than PUREX. Not even necessarily a completely new process, just better controls around handling waste and making sure there's no massive liquid tanks just waiting to leak into the ground like the Hanford site. Most spent fuel is depleted uranium and not ex…

Vitrified waste is, despite naive assumptions, porous
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