"Recently, places as diverse as Texas, California, Oklahoma/Iowa/Kansas/Nebraska (SPP), the UK, and Germany have rapidly decarbonized without nuclear."<p>Uh...Germany's actually recarbonized by shutting down their nuclear [increasing coal and imported electricity to pick up the slack].<p>"The nuclear electricity production lost in Germany's phase-out was primarily replaced with coal electricity production and electricity importing. One study found that the nuclear phase-out caused $12 billion in social costs per year, primarily due to increases in mortality due to exposure to pollution from fossil fuels."
--[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany</a>]<p>California's likely to have serious shortages [again] if they shut off the rest of theirs. Plus: "California's electricity rates are among the highest in the United States as a result of the changing energy mix within the state, including aggressive construction of new natural gas power plants."
--[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_California" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_California</a>]<p>I don't know enough to check the rest of the article, but this certainly gives me some doubts as to its accuracy.
Nuclear engineer here. If you want a deep dive into US reactor development history, I wrote this up on a vacation.<p><a href="https://whatisnuclear.com/reactor_history.html" rel="nofollow">https://whatisnuclear.com/reactor_history.html</a><p>My take on the more modern economics is here<p><a href="https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html" rel="nofollow">https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html</a><p>And waste here <a href="https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html" rel="nofollow">https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html</a>
It has nothing to do with economics, nuclear energy is stagnant because the industry is a regulatory hell. From eia.gov:<p>Of the 104 operating nuclear power reactors in the United States:<p>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.<p>The last operating license for a nuclear power plant was issued in 1996 to the Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar Unit 1, near Spring City, Tennessee after initial construction began in 1973.
This is a solid write-up. I particularly like this part:<p>> Most fusion concepts are just a more complicated way to heat water.<p>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 true.<p>It's also kind of wild to consider that we want to heat up hydrogen to a 100 million degrees... to boil water and turn a turbine.<p>I'll also highlight this:<p>> As we've seen, traditional LWRs have a cost problem. That is why the PR ignores costs or focuses only on operating costs.<p>My own view:<p>1. There are several hundred nuclear power plants in the world. Not one of them has been built without government assistance. This goes to the capital cost issue;<p>2. Nuclear power plants take too long to plan, build and bring online. IIRC it's at least 11 years;<p>3. We still don't have a good long-term plan for dealing with processing waste at scale;<p>4. We still don't have a good long-term plan for dealing with fuel waste at scale; and<p>5. I just don't trust humans, particularly within the corporate structure, to build and operate nuclear power plants safely. The temptation is simply too high to increase profits by cutting costs.
The fact that nuclear power regulators are routinely anti-nuclear power probably isn't helping things.<p><a href="https://www.powermag.com/blog/former-nuclear-leaders-say-no-to-new-reactors/" rel="nofollow">https://www.powermag.com/blog/former-nuclear-leaders-say-no-...</a><p>>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 General, French Agency for Energy Management, former Advisor to French Minister of Environment, Energy and Nuclear Safety
I live in South Korea. One thing people miss about nuclear power in South Korea is that natural gas is expensive in South Korea, because there is no pipeline connection and it is imported liquified. The article quotes $25/MWh for natural gas in PJM, where comparable number in South Korea is $100/MWh.<p>Truth is, if South Korea had pipeline connection to Siberian natural gas field (not an absurd supposition, there was fairly concrete plan proposed in 2012 which fell through due to politics), nuclear power would be uneconomical in South Korea no matter how it keeps construction cost cheapest in the world. Therefore, economical nuclear power in the United States can never happen by copying South Korea, because natural gas is cheap in the United States.
I will start this off by saying I am very pro nuclear. However, I think it is likely that the last nuclear power plant to be built in the United States will be built in the next 5-10 years. Looking at the trajectory of renewables and energy storage it seems that every other method of generating power will slowly be priced out of existence.<p>Given the politics (fission) and uncertainty (fusion) of nuclear, I think it is highly unlikely that there is a long term future for the industry (100 years). Even though we will need some level of baseline power for when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing, I think it is likely that geothermal or natural gas plants will fill that role.<p>Nuclear is too bespoke, and you need a massive amount of capital before you generate one watt of power.
The article doesn’t include the word “baseload”, which is an important consideration. Utilities pay more for peaker capacity. For the same reason, market pricing regulations need to encouraging sources that provide a base amount of power despite weather conditions: network reliability and security of supply are valuable. (Let’s ignore Texas though).<p>In New Zealand, we are dependent on seasonal rain for our hydro-power, and in some years we run dry and the whole economy is affected. In NZ the 1992 power crisis due to a 1:100 year drought required 10%-15% reduction in power usage nationwide, which caused a 0.6% reduction in the NZ GDP: <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/how-we-learned-the-lessons-from-1992/NLFVIOGURGV7GAL3XCHNWBX4ZM/" rel="nofollow">https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/how-we-learned-the-lessons-fro...</a><p>Even a predicted security of supply risk of 1% has consequences (even thinking we could run dry causes costs). Fantastic article: <a href="https://www.newsroom.co.nz/will-nz-run-out-of-electricity-this-winter" rel="nofollow">https://www.newsroom.co.nz/will-nz-run-out-of-electricity-th...</a><p>NZ is lucky that if we install solar electricity, we can effectively store it in our existing lakes, no batteries needed. We are unlucky that politically our government wastes money[1] on subsidising electric cars, when they could subsidise solar instead (in fact it just needs political will, private investors have $X*100 million plans already designed for solar, but surprisingly held up by lack of interest by government).<p>[1] <a href="https://www.1news.co.nz/2022/05/16/29b-climate-change-boost-for-evs-waste-emissions-reduction/" rel="nofollow">https://www.1news.co.nz/2022/05/16/29b-climate-change-boost-...</a> “A new scrap-and-replace scheme to help low-and-middle income New Zealanders buy EVs and a nationalised curbside waste collection service is part of a significant $2.9 billion investment into tackling climate change and reducing New Zealand's emissions.”
investment cost and payoff. a gas turbine plant can deliver returns in as little as six years and requires minimal oversight. a nuclear plant may take as long as 30 years before it returns a profit, and it lives under a government regulatory and security magnifying glass.<p>personal opinion but the modern american investor has no patience for anything but instant profits. nuclear could be great but the executives you have to convince are all well familiar with and scarred by their 60 year old reactors.
Energy crises are caused by cheap energy. When energy is cheap people use a lot and stop investing in new sources. The resulting crisis causes high energy prices which causes people to be more efficient and to invest in new energy sources. It takes 20 or 30 years for this to play out. (mid 1970s, early 2000s, current 2022)<p>Each cycle leaves behind a tranche of books that reprise the last crisis, with the interesting effect that the literature often looks like a stopped clock.<p>One bit of stoppage is that people still compare nuclear to coal, although coal has been uneconomical in North America since the 1980s. One issue is that a coal burning plant (like a current nuclear plant) has a huge steam turbine that's more than 10 times the size of gas turbines used for aircraft engines and for generating power from natural gas.<p>It's no accident therefore that we stopped building coal and nuclear plants <i>at the same time.</i> The Amory Lovins "soft energy path" was not a transition to renewables but rather a transition to methane.<p>There's not just the capital cost of the steam turbine but also the cost of the heat exchangers, if you look here<p><a href="https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/pwrs.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/pwrs.html</a><p>the image is roughly to scale and you see that there are multiple "steam generators" that individually are as large as the reactor vessel and are every bit as safety critical as the reactor vessel because a breakage could lead to a loss of coolant accident.<p>The cost of the heat handling parts is substantial enough that even if the cost of the core was zero and the heat was free the LWR would still struggle to compete.<p>A reactor that runs at higher temperature using liquid metal, liquid salt, or a gas coolant like helium, could drive a Brayton cycle gas turbine powerset which would fit inside the employee break room of the turbine house of an LWR.<p>Of course it's tricky: we have quite a bit of experience with liquid metal reactors, and a little bit with other types. The closed-cycle gas turbine however is a work in progress<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-cycle_gas_turbine" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-cycle_gas_turbine</a>
The Lazard report cited is two years old. There’s an updated version here:
<a href="https://www.lazard.com/media/451881/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-150-vf.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.lazard.com/media/451881/lazards-levelized-cost-o...</a><p>Better visualization of the key chart here: <a href="https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2022/~/media/Images/research/economics/2022/0208/dfe0208c2.png" rel="nofollow">https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2022/~/media/Im...</a>
Why do these article never lay any blame on the industry itself? From the recent history of nuclear power in America it seems clear that the large-scale civil engineering business is replete with grifters trying to skim a few billion off the top for delivering nothing. PV and wind win against these because they do not need the involvement of the large-scale civil engineering profit complex. Instead of examining these evident facts, the articles always focus on regulatory and political headwinds. I don't understand why the industry itself is ignored.
A common theme I see, is tech venture capital types without any physics background complaining about the over regulation of nuclear energy. If there's one technology you'd rather over regulate than risk a catastrophic externality, it's nuclear.<p>I'm just imagining what a shit show it would be if the "move fast and break shit" Silicon Valley mentality was applied to nuclear energy. No thanks.<p>I would strongly prefer a cautious but ambitious government plan spear headed by physicists from the national labs.
My theory - technology advances at the rate of half life of each buying cycle. Phones advance quickly because people replace them every 2-3 years. Cars, every 7-10 years. Nuclear reactors every 59 years. Hence the slow rate of advancement.
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.<p>And they have decided that nuclear is scary. Honestly we get what we deserve.
I am reminded of an amusing incident in the Netherlands: the prime minister talked about new reactors and made the faux pas of mentioning specific locations.<p>Immediately a shit storm brew up and he was forced to publicly apologize.
Keep it vague. We all love nuclear now. But not a single spade in the ground by order of NIMBY!
I was curious about new types of nuclear reactors.<p>But, it turns out they still can't deliver what nuclear proponents claim.<p>Sabine Hossenfelder explains it very well:<p><a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0kahih8RT1k" rel="nofollow">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0kahih8RT1k</a>
NuScale power just went public. Their modular 77 megawatt reactor was designed to be easy to operate and have passive failure modes.
<a href="https://www.nuscalepower.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.nuscalepower.com/</a>
I don't think it's stagnant. I continue to see stuff like small modular reactors making progress. The obvious reason why it doesn't get more play is because it doesn't serve anybody's political goals. Renewables and carbon taxes or other measures to try and reduce quality of life (or opposition to those) get attention because they have good political value. Actually spending money and generating sustainable power, not much you can do with that, it doesn't match an ideology. Same with carbon capture and storage. There are good technical motivations to climate change, they just don't have a political champion.
This is a good summary article. It appears many commenters haven't read it so here's the key paragraph:<p>"Even if you think that natural gas should be banned or taxed away, nuclear will still end up uncompetitive. By the time you finish a single LWR, investors will build enough solar and storage to eat high daytime electricity rates. If you assume current nuclear plant operating costs and a very optimistic OCC then only a modest decline in cost makes solar + storage cheaper for 24/7 power. Solar and batteries have declined over 90% in price over the last decade, and the learning curve powering growth looks to continue."
I can answer this in one word: privatisation.<p>The neo-liberal economy is at total odds with this industry.<p>For a private enterprise to succede at nuclear power, it would take someone crazy and with very deep pockets like Elon Musk, but even then, his model wouldn't work as failure is not an option. You can't fail and iterate.<p>So what we have instead is privately run nuclear power plants, that are entirely publicly funded, with 0 risk taken, in typical neo-liberal fashion: socialisation of the costs and risks, privatisation of the profits.
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?<p>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).
Having Studied this for decades,
It is on purpose and through sheer incompetence.<p>1) the 'greens' in the 60's were authentic but then they were co-opted by fossil fuel and military industrial complex that didn't WANT competitive nuclear power construction industry.<p>2) corruption and incompetence: unions killing big construction in general. when is the last major water project...dam or otherwise (alaskan water pipeline project planned since 1950's) that the u.s. was able to pull off. ?<p>3) conspiracy: the only thing really stopping nuclear power being built all over the west , and being built properly in the east ( there is a construction explosion in india/china) ---is proper spent fuel reprocessing.<p>nuclear spent fuel is the biggest impediment to building plants. and despite how seemingly simply the problem would be to solve if you threw enough money and regulatory power at it----it is still 'unsolved'.
this is ridiculous. and the solution is not 'thorium' or other as of yet unproven technologies. it's just 'processing' the waste in any number of existing processes--that are feasible if the engineering is built out. but it's not.<p>the opposite. yucca mountain used the idea of 'burying the fuel' to steal money for skunkworks in a tunnel, or just for more tunnels.
Its stagnant because public opinion has been scared with stories of Fukushima and Chernobyl.<p>Ppl dont understand that we can build reactors that not only can be powered up bu old nuclear waste but also are physically impossible to explode.<p>But yea.. lets subsidize coal and oil industries more putting one more nail to humanity coffin.<p>Corrupt politicians and stupid ppl voting for them are the issue, like always.
Nuclear is not popular because the fossil fuel industry co-opt the environmentalist to fight on their behalf. We should have better developed nuclear for the last few decades and we would be in a much better energy posture. Especially for an EV future.
The fundamental problem as i see it:
Nuclear is profitable/possible only at large scale,
it cannot 'scale down', unlike e.g. wind/wave turbines
you can't buy a mini-reactor because the industry is very regulated(and for a very obvious reasons).
the closest scaled-down nuclear has got is RITEG , which was built without these regulations(and would horrify Americans as much recreational nukes).
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator#Theft" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...</a>
How can i invest in nuclear innovation? Most investment options seem to be either quasi government nuclear utilities or uranium commodity investments. Also a few of the fusion startups are only VC/acceedited investor options
I think it has to do with a declining IQ score among Western nations. There are simply not enough employees with the education and competentency level required to safely operate these plants anymore.
> Recently, places as diverse as Texas, California, Oklahoma/Iowa/Kansas/Nebraska (SPP), the UK, and Germany have rapidly decarbonized without nuclear.<p>Nuclear is still part of the UK's strategy and new nuclear is still being built.<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_powe...</a>
The nuclear energy industry needs to lay down the pipe dreams of long building times and long CAPEX expenses<p>Nobody is paying for this anymore. "Oooh but the efficiency" the efficiency of something that produces 0kWh is 0<p>Nuclear needs its SpaceX moment where you attack the costs and processes (without compromising safety). As SLS has shown, building on top of old projects is just a money sink.
It's not stagnant in China or India. That's where the innovation is happening.<p>Here in the US it's been shackled and shamed out of existence but it's also had all innovation and improvement barred as well.<p>Look to buying nuclear technology at a premium from India or China in the future just to catch up with where we should have been.
Storing nuclear waste for 10,000+ years is also unpopular and no-one wants it stored in their backyard and further does it add up to put aside proper funds to steward waste for 10,000 years.
If you weren't aware, General Fusion is currently building their demo plant. They use liquid metal to both contain the fusion reaction and extract the heat from it.
>Why is the Nuclear Power Industry Stagnant?<p>Regulations.
Lack of investments.
Lack of scale.
Scare mongering.
Lack of research.<p>After 60' not much money went into research for nuclear power. While solar power, betteries etc. become much cheaper due to a huge stream of money flowing into research for that area. If comparable sums would be used for research into nuclear power, probably the power plants would be cheaper and nuclear energy would be cheaper to produce.
It wasn't that long ago that wind and electric weren't economically viable sources of energy. But after putting a lot of effort into making them more efficient they are now somewhat practical. As far as I know, similar levels of research and innovation haven't happened for nuclear fission. At least not yet.
The "industry" is stagnant because it's private, so NOT to deliver a service but to make profits, it's like nation-wide fiber-optic networks in less dense areas, profit is INCOMPATIBLE with quality of the service for all.<p>Nuclear works only as a way to have a constant (as much as possible) amount of power over time, something for the whole society something that's only viable if done by FULLY public utilities only owned by States who just need to deliver electricity to power anything.<p>My only hope in this regards is that as much as the crisis bite more and more people realize that the neo-feudal society neoliberals have built is against 99% of the people and so react ERASING the private-public sector confining to States-only public show for ALL essential services like:<p>- natural resource management<p>- energy production and supply<p>- water supply<p>- health, pharmaceutical sector included<p>- TLCs<p>- academia (well founded public research, for the public, powerful and strictly not patentable or obtainable in any exclusive way by the private sector)<p>- weapons<p>- basic food production to ensure survival of resident in any area for an undefined period of time<p>- basic nation-wide logistics<p>Like it WAS in the very recent past. Of course such changes accompanied with life sentences for most relevant private-sector and public traitors and criminals against humanity not to punish them, that's simply impossible, but to teach others not to never ever try again their criminal path.<p>Yes, I'm serious, no, I'm not at all "an extremist" from the right or left part of the spectrum.
Society has chosen not to meaningfully incentivize addressing climate change. From that perspective, why not just continue taking the free energy from the ground? (Or use solar and other renewables, but only if cheaper.) Why bother with scary, expensive nuclear?
NIMBY, overregulation driven by FUD that's often funded by other entrenched energy interests, misguided do gooders that decades ago were worried about global warming (now climate change) who also hated nuclear because it's less environmentally friendly than renewable.<p>That last one is tragic. We could have a massively smaller carbon footprint <i>right now</i> if we'd gone big down that path, presuming we also dumped resources for research into alternative uses for spent fuel & safe long-term storage. Instead of buying an electric cars that right now are powered by fossil fuels producing electricity (potentially even less efficient if the energy still comes from coal) electric might have hit their "killer app" stage a few years ago. (I'll concede that battery tech might not have advanced any faster with cheaper clean electricity and so we might still be just as ICE dependent as we are now)<p>At this point nuclear might be moot. I'm not sure, honestly. But we seem to be approaching a tipping point where off-peak storage mechanisms for renewables are almost maturing enough for national-grid scale build outs. This would make the faster & cheaper build out of renewables (compared long expensive nuclear builds) more viable as replacements for plants that are currently needed for base load capacity, which is where nuclear's economic sweet spot is at. It takes a relatively longer time to ramp up/down the output of nuclear plants compared to others, and they have high overhead to begin with relative to others (natural gas plants that ramp down in off-hours don't have to pay for the gas they don't but) so while more flexible variable output nuclear plant designs are maturing they may be too late in the game. Right now the future for nuclear appears to be more niche applications. Relatively portable rapidly deployable units for instant infrastructure, for example. (I believe this is currently under research by US military)<p>Anyway, that's a bit of a digression. The TLDR is sociopolitical facts killed nuclear (caveat: China is going very big on nuclear, they still see value there) and we've now reach a point where the issue is moot(ish).
It's simply not profitable to do the job so well. Abundance (blowing past the demand curve, if you like) just isn't rewarded under ccapitalism.<p>There's plenty of more specific stories worth telling, but for the big picture around much such infrastructure work, this is the elephant in the room.
Russophobia aside, the next-gen russian nuclear model (first exporter in the world, of nuclear plants) is built in 3.5 years, which is state of the art. And at the same time has a high throughput (1300MWe) (much higher than the billion dollar mini-reactor fad) and state of the art longevity.
It's very difficult for me to find the actual prices, of the different nuclear plants models competitors, but since most of the cost is construction cost and 3.5 year is SOTA, I assume, if Russia price them reasonably that this will shift the balance of nuclear energy competitivity worldwide. (china nuclear is already price competitive however they don't export (yet?))<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VVER#VVER-TOI" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VVER#VVER-TOI</a>
If anyone has more info on those seemingly disruptive VVER-TOI, please share
Has anyone built a facility to store the waste for 1 million years yet?
I think Finland is the only country in earth who started for real.
It is mind boggling to me that people even consider building more waste before having the slightest idea what to do with nuclear waste. And the talking about how clean it is. Lol.
> Nuclear power plant cost varies dramatically by country and period. Lovering, Yip, and Nordhaus compiled historical OCC data in their 2016 paper.[2]<p>What is the overnight construction cost for China and Russia??
Probably for the same reason we don't see massively expanding horse carriage industry. Nuclear is on the way out despite enormous government subsidies. Just fundamentally too burdensome, expensive, and outcompeted by modern tech.