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Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

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Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#161

Post by Maursault »

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 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 proven bad for 7 decades bad, you could not stop investors from building a nuclear power plant in every county in the US.

I promise you that you can have all the nuclear power plants you want, but all you need to do is make it make money. Make nuclear power profitable, and the world is your oyster. Because we need it, and the pronuke crowd is stuck in the mud moaning about regulations and doing nothing but being annoying. It isn't the regulations. Even if the nuclear industry were entirely unregulated, it still couldn't generate profit. 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, draw in investors, let them deal with the regulations, and retire with a fortune. But no, instead we get blaming and finger pointing. It is the money, and that is all it is. Make it make money, please, make it make money.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#162

Post by jltsiren »

SemanticStrengh wrote: post #68
jmyeet wrote: post #41

This is a solid write-up. I particularly like this part: > Most fusion concepts are just a more complicated way to heat water. It's kind of wild that our means of power production do ultimately mostly boil down (pun intended) to turning a turbine with steam and, as the article notes, this is an inherent cost problem whereas solar is a direct form of energy. I hadn't really thought about it in those terms but it's tru…

> Nuclear power plants take too long to plan, build and bring online. IIRC it's at least 11 years It's crazy what people come to believe. To generalize the pathetic bureaucratic failures like the EPR to all model couldn't be farther from reality. Russian commercialized VVER 1200 models take 57 month to build. Their successor, the VVER-TOI take 40 month, so 3.5 year to build. It output 1300MWe Besides the russian comp…

Finland was trying to get one VVER 1200 built, with an option to build another later. The political approval for the project was given in 2010 and the contract with Rosatom was signed in 2014. In the following 8 years, Rosatom failed to produce the blueprints and other documents required for the actual construction permit. Meanwhile, Russia bombed some factories in Ukraine that were supposed to build key parts for the power plant, and it's looking increasingly unlikely that the construction will ever start.

In contrast, the EPR reactor built by Areva only needed 3 years from the political approval to the construction permit. While Rosatom is probably more competent in the actual construction, they seem to have major issues in operating in countries where the regulatory authorities are strict (but still pro-nuclear).

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#163

Post by dboreham »

Because nuclear power plants and the associated fuel cycle industry is incredibly dangerous and the participants have consistently lied about that danger for all of history?

Note: not a tree hugger. I believe nuclear power (in conjunction with significant restrictions on consumption) must play a big part in decarbonization. But...so many lies for so long. Put down the Kool-Aid and admit these things are not safe and therefore need to be sited well away from human populations (as they were originally in the 1950s).

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#164

Post by sb057 »

pfdietz wrote: post #105
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…

The NRC exists to separate nuclear advocacy from nuclear regulation (AEC did both.) Perhaps you are confusing non-advocacy with opposition?

I'm not sure how a statement describing nuclear power as "too costly... too costly and risky... unsustainable... financially unsustainable... militarily hazardous... inherently risky due to unavoidable cascading accidents... subject to too many unresolved technical and safety problems... [and] too unwieldy and complex" can be construed as anything other than opposition to nuclear power.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#165

Post by mancerayder »

dboreham wrote: post #163

Because nuclear power plants and the associated fuel cycle industry is incredibly dangerous and the participants have consistently lied about that danger for all of history? Note: not a tree hugger. I believe nuclear power (in conjunction with significant restrictions on consumption) must play a big part in decarbonization. But...so many lies for so long. Put down the Kool-Aid and admit these things are not safe and…

What's unsafe about the later generation plants and technology?

It sounds like the fuel utilization is at least 10 times more efficient?

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#166

Post by systemvoltage »

SemanticStrengh wrote: post #109
systemvoltage wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The system needs voltage

Your semantics are strong.

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#168

Post by CyanBird »

Maursault wrote: post #161
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 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…

> 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 reactors be safe

Choose 2 from above

Even the AP1400 fail the test above, as more than a couple of them at least in China have been build over/close by seismic faults and in shores with tsunami risk

The fact that Toshiba nearly went bankrupt trying to build ap1000 nuclear reactors ought say it all

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#169

Post by replygirl »

jeffbee wrote: post #132
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…

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

Re: Why is the nuclear power industry stagnant?

#170

Post by systemvoltage »

Maursault wrote: post #161
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 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 risks; then we'd never have anything. Software would have been written by large corporations who have the funds to penetrate the regulations.

Let's not take one iota of blame away from regulations. It needs to be brought naked to people to see why environmentalists have gotten themselves into a chinese finger trap (want to save the world but without nuclear).

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