Submitted by OutlandishnessOk2452 t3_11dbtqe in technology
547610831 t1_ja7oq8o wrote
The problem here is that any first of a kind technology is going to cost a huge amount of money. If you're actually serious about a technology then you've got to be willing to endure a lot of cost overruns and schedule delays on the first few plants. If you're just going to cancel the whole program because the first plant is a cluster fuck then don't even bother.
Infernalism t1_ja7pjcw wrote
The problem is that every single nuclear project has been plagued with these cost and time overruns. Even standard and well understood nuclear plants are seeing time overruns in the decades and cost overruns that end up doubling the price. Or more.
For standard nuclear plants. Ones we've been building for decades and decades.
Meanwhile, solar and wind and battery tech continues to improve steadily even though we're seeing regular tech improvements that should, logically, mean that it'd cost more. But, it doesn't. It lowers the price on renewables. Constantly.
Is it any surprise people are leery as fuck about investing in nuclear?
547610831 t1_ja7qf13 wrote
That's not really true at all. Lots of nuclear plants were built in reasonable time frames and budgets. A new nuclear plant used to only cost a Billion dollars (yes, that's adjusted for inflation. The problem is that anti-nuke forces took hold in many governments (especially after TMI and Chernobyl) and they made the regulatory environment completely untenable. Plants that were virtually complete had to be torn apart and rebuilt, many were just abandoned because the cost of the new regulations was more than the cost of the original plant. No industry can ever survive that way. And that was the whole point. The people who make these regulations don't want nuclear to survive. It was just a backhanded way of killing nuclear without an outright ban.
https://thebreakthrough.org/articles/historical-construction-costs-of-global-nuclear-power-reactors
Infernalism t1_ja7qmk1 wrote
> The problem is that anti-nuke forces took hold in many governments (especially after TMI and Chernobyl) and they made the regulatory environment completely untenable.
Because safety is something that totally should be flexible when it comes to nuclear reactors.
547610831 t1_ja7xh0f wrote
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Just because a regulation exists doesn't mean it actually improves safety. Quite frankly a lot of nuclear regulations DECREASE safety. They're not really about safety at all, they're just a way to increase costs. Most of the cost isnt new safety decices, it's just mountains of extra paperwork.
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The perception of risk regarding nuclear is just completely askew. Thousands of chemicals we use are also known carcinogens and can be handled with minimal regulations. Chemical leaks are a daily occurrence to the point they rarely make the news. The regulations against radiation are thousands of times stricter than those against most chemical carcinogens. Even the worst case scenario with nuclear you're talking tens of deaths. Lots of chemical spills have killed thousands and they kill hundreds of thousands in terms of long term exposures. Global warming will kill millions or even tens of millions. The risk from nuclear is miniscule in comparison to the alternatives.
BurningPenguin t1_ja87kr2 wrote
> Quite frankly a lot of nuclear regulations DECREASE safety
Name one
> Chemical leaks are a daily occurrence to the point they rarely make the news.
Maybe in the US...
> The regulations against radiation are thousands of times stricter than those against most chemical carcinogens
Again, something that might be a US thing
> Even the worst case scenario with nuclear you're talking tens of deaths. Lots of chemical spills have killed thousands and they kill hundreds of thousands in terms of long term exposures.
Oh, so nuclear accidents have no long term effect now. Nice.
Sure, nuclear appears to be quite safe nowadays, but let's not pretend that a major accident has less consequences than chemical spills. I live in Bavaria and our mushrooms are still radioactive.
547610831 t1_ja88cn7 wrote
>I live in Bavaria and our mushrooms are still radioactive.
Everything is radioactive my guy. If you brought a pallet of bananas into a nuclear plant it would have to be disposed of as nuclear waste due to the radiation level. Regardless, Chernobyl killed less people than coal plants do every day. And it's much less an indictment of nuclear as it is Communism and the Soviet Union. No reactor like that is currently operating.
BurningPenguin t1_jabfv66 wrote
So, you can't name a regulation that decreases safety. Got it.
Also, news flash: Mushrooms and wild animals aren't bananas. And I'm quite sure even bananas don't contain a considerable amount Cesium-137.
>No reactor like that is currently operating.
Almost like those "unsafe" safety regulations are working as intended.
hobbers t1_ja9hki0 wrote
Safety or risk mitigation should always be quantified.
About 40k - 50k people die every year in automobile collisions. We could mitigate most of that, but we don't, because we judge it not worthy.
Infernalism t1_ja9hnfo wrote
The car companies judge it not worthy. It's like the people dying have any say in the matter.
hobbers t1_jaaec5u wrote
We don't have legislation requiring cars to be safe enough to not kill 40k - 50k people a year. That's all of us together deciding it's not worthy.
billdietrich1 t1_ja8nf8f wrote
One problem is that you're trying to compete in a market where costs of renewables and storage decrease every year. You can't just hold steady with cost and schedule, you have to be something amazing. And steam-based nuclear never will be that.
547610831 t1_ja8nzq6 wrote
Nuclear costs would drop significantly if we would let them. Renewable and batteries won't drop forever as well. Regardless, it's vitally important to have diversity of supply. The more sources of power you have the more resilient your grid will be.
billdietrich1 t1_ja8p28k wrote
Nuclear is costly even in countries that are very much in favor of it.
We can have diversity while only using renewables and storage; we have a wide range of types of them, with more being developed.
I wouldn't bet against another few decades of cost decreases in renewables and storage. Graphene, organics, new catalysts, bio-fuels (not corn ethanol), flow batteries, all show a lot of promise.
547610831 t1_ja8ql85 wrote
Not really. The UAE built their new reactors quickly and cheaply. Japan used go build reactor incredibly fast, but unfortunately has turned sour on nuclear.
billdietrich1 t1_ja8tvv7 wrote
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_Arab_Emirates#Barakah_nuclear_power_plant , it looks like the first reactor was scheduled to produce in 2017, but didn't start producing until mid-2020. That's 8 years after start of construction. Price tag for 4 reactors is somewhere from $20 to $30 billion. I wouldn't call that either quickly or cheaply.
547610831 t1_ja8u7ik wrote
For 4 reactors that's pretty darn good. If we could build a new reactor for 5 Billion there would be a dozen under construction right now.
billdietrich1 t1_ja8uqrf wrote
That time was for the first reactor, not four. And it's one plant, not four plants.
Sure, a non-democratic govt will be able to do things faster and thus cheaper. No lawsuits, no loss of focus or change of policy. But even they can't do nuclear quickly and cheaply.
bitfriend6 t1_ja8zuo5 wrote
We can't have diversity with just renewables and storage, because the large reservoirs and battery vats required for it won't be built or require so much material it invalidates whatever emissions savings went into it. Wind and solar are nice to have, but all of them exist with gas as baseload power and gas can only be replaced by nuclear or coal. Since we're theoretically banning coal, this leaves nuclear as a required element.
China has already discovered this with their new next-gen coal plant construction program. PV-onlyism won't work. And really, why should we constrain ourselves that way anyway?
billdietrich1 t1_ja9203c wrote
We have or will have N types of renewable generation (hydro, solar PV, solar-thermal, solar-hydrogen, wind, wave, tidal, geothermal, maybe biomass, maybe some kind of engineered plant things generating electricity, who knows) and M types of storage (pumped-hydro, thermal, P forms of chemical battery, hydrogen, gravity, flywheel, bio-fuel, compressed-air, who knows). Fairly soon they will give us costs lower than nuclear, and far less climate damage than fossil. We won't be "constraining" ourselves much by using a mix of the best choices, instead of trying to keep an also-ran tech such as nuclear on life-support.
aquarain t1_ja89pv3 wrote
The problem here is that the technology development and engineering required to stand up a solar plant is:
Step one. Throw the panel on the ground.
Step two. Power comes out.
billdietrich1 t1_ja8np02 wrote
Well, you do need inverters and grid-tie and space and permits etc.
aquarain t1_jaapec6 wrote
I too get pedantic sometimes.
"Solar Plant" can include RV applications where the direct current is used... Directly. Without telling anybody. Like a nasty off grid Mad Max rebel.
547610831 t1_ja8b5cd wrote
Uhh, no. There's Billions spent to engineer better solar panels. The cost of solar 20 years ago was 10x what it is now.
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