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> is nuclear power cost effective?

To answer this, you need to ask "compared to what?"

The article's implicit assumption is that the comparison should be between a possibly quite expensive future with nuclear power, and a possibly even more expensive future with climate change that is extremely costly to deal with. If you agree with the second possibility being a realistic one (I personally don't, but that's really a separate discussion), then the first one can look cost-effective, simply because it's cheaper than the alternative.

If, OTOH, you're comparing nuclear power with cheap fossil fuels, in an environment where even safe nuclear reactors have to undergo years of legal challenges on the NIMBY principle, whereas a new coal, oil, or natural gas plant gets up and running quickly, then of course nuclear power isn't going to look cost-effective. (People who favor the previous comparison, with the "expensive climate change" alternative, would probably say the "cheap fossil fuel" alternative only looks cheap because it doesn't take all the costs into account.) But that could change if fossil fuels get more expensive (whether because they simply get harder to extract, or they face increasing regulation based on other factors like climate change).

> if we had started focusing on nuclear power 40 years ago -- and if we had done it carefully and properly the first time -- it would have been the right decision.

Now you seem to be making a different implicit comparison, between what we have now and what you think we would have if we'd focused "carefully and properly" on nuclear power from the start. But we arguably haven't focused "carefully and properly" on fossil fuels either; for example, coal dust has killed far more people by causing respiratory problems than nuclear power has, yet it took decades for "clean coal" to even be a talking point. Why should nuclear be the only technology where we have to do it "carefully and properly" or not at all? If you're going to compare them fairly, you have to compare them at equivalent levels of risk.

That's why there's such focus now on small modular reactors, with a bunch of startup companies attempting to develop them. The main impediment is the NRC, which has been slow to come up with licensing rules appropriate for small reactors or advanced designs (some of which have very good passive safety).

Here's a recent article from IEEE Spectrum that argues that small reactors will never be cost competitive.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/the-forgotten-histor...

That's an argument based on a lot of old reactors, mostly light-water variations. Solar wasn't economically viable back then either, but technology improved. The same is happening with nuclear.

In particular, simple molten-salt reactors like those designed by Terrestrial Energy and ThorCon look very promising.

The article is from this year. What about these advanced designs makes them more cost competitive?

I think the arguments in the article point out that there are lots of costs associated with these small reactors. Not the least of which is that they require decommissioning sooner than their larger counterparts and that the cost of decommissioning alone can make the reactor non-viable economically. It's not clear how changing the working fluid would reduce decommissioning costs.

It was written this year, but the reactors it mentions are old.

Here's a good rundown of ThorCon's cost projections: http://thorconpower.com/costing

It doesn't use any technology that wasn't proven in the 1970s: http://thorconpower.com/features/no-new-technology

The reactor cores are in sealed replaceable "cans." They run for four years, cool for four years, and then shipped back to a processing facility.

Terrestrial Energy has a similar design: sealed factory-built units with a simple liquid fueled design, based on the Oak Ridge molten salt reactor: http://terrestrialenergy.com/imsr-technology/

Safety is completely passive, based on the inherent physics of the fuel and coolant. It's at atmospheric pressure, with no possibility of a chemical explosion like we saw at Fukushima. Fission products mostly plate out or are chemically bound in the salt. In ThorCon's case, if the reactor lose electricity, a frozen plug of fuel melts, and all the fuel drains out to a tank designed to passively cool it.

I tend to think the 'push' for small reactors, fifth generation reactors, and alternative designs is same as the 'push' for 'clean coal'. A political ploy to keep the government subsidies coming and forestall the eventual taxing of the industries externalities. And to hopefully prevent alternatives like solar from getting funding.

Seriously, solar is already at cost parity and the economics are getting better with time. Plus externalities are minimal. Compared to nuclear power which gets less economic over time and has very open ended externalities.

Solar's at cost parity if you don't consider the overproduction and storage you'd need to run civilization on it, without fossil backup.

Solar is a niche technology with a limited role to play. You need to double production in the day and add storage just to get 24hr supply. If you want more than 12 hours backup you need to double again. If you want 48 hours backup you need 4x production and storage. The numbers get quite unfeasible quite quickly. You cannot have an energy generation system that is unable to cope with a multi-day weather event, right when you need it to be producing energy.

As a load following, top-up power source for peak daytime usage, or for charging storage based devices like cars, it's great. But you cannot compare solar and nuclear because they are entirely separate classes of energy production.

Cheap power by day, expensive by night can shift a lot of demand to daytime. Like water/building heating, cooling, battery charging, etc.

I agree that solar is already at cost parity, but not after battery costs. Furthermore I live in Canada, in the winter our solar power generates only 1 / 80th of the power, and unless we're going to tie our energy security to the United States, we're going to need alternatives.

Nuclear power in Canada is a complete success. We generate at 6 to 7 cents per kilowatt hour in the first 30 years, and the amortized cost continues to decrease after that. Yes there are maintenance costs, but do you know what else there are? Medical isotopes that the world desperately needs to keep our diagnostics working.

You can make nuclear cheap and safe. The problem is cultural, not scientific. If a society is too greedy and corrupt or too deferent to authority, then nuclear won't work. But in places like Canada, Sweden, and France they work very, very well.

Also, Thorium reactors are much less likely to cause problems and they are part of the fifth gen reactor designs.

We need both nuclear and solar.

I definitely wouldn't consider nuclear power in Canada to be a complete success.

In 1999, Ontario Hydro's debt stood at $38.1 billion, most of which came from the construction of nuclear plants. For comparison, the entire government debt at the time was a little over $100 billion.

These plants will continue operating well into this century, so when all is said and done, all of the cost overruns (and the 17 year shutdown at Bruce) will hopefully be worth it.

But it's unreasonable to consider nuclear power to be a complete and clear-cut "home run" and to suggest that, as the original article stated, "only fear and capital" stand in the way of rolling out more nuclear plants.

Is there any possibility that the US will get so much power from wind, solar, and other renewables that it can realistically anticipate not burning coal? Every year we wait for renewable to offset coal, more people die from coal's impact.

The more advanced (Stanford Energy Symposium) research that I've seen suggests that there is only one possible power source that we can look to long term to meet the energy needs of the world, and that is Solar Energy. Nuclear Energy just won't be possible to build out quickly enough, inexpensively enough - even if we could do it safely. In particular, check out Nate Lewis's Solar Energy 101 (https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodca...) - In the Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP) where he makes a strong case that the only choice is Solar - not because it's a good one, but because there is nothing else out there that can meet our needs (And he spends a bit of time talking about Nuclear Energy, and why it comes up short).

The entire series is a gold mine for people who actually want to talk about energy generation and climate change on an informed basis rather than just making guesses to suit their particular world view.

With that said, one of my favorite futurists, Ramez Naam, who is a big proponent of Wind and Solar (See: http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/30/how-steady-can-the-wind-blow... and http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/10/how-cheap-can-solar-get-very...) still thinks we should invest in nuclear, as it has an important role to play in regions where renewable resources (Solar/Wind/GeoThermal/HydroElectric etc...) are not available, and as a hedge against storage (which is critical for solar/wind) technology not advancing to where we need it for 100% support of base-load power.

Though he also talks about Storage here: http://rameznaam.com/2015/04/14/energy-storage-about-to-get-...

Here's a link to the video of Nate Lewis' talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yNj1zEh-nM

That's awesome - I had no idea you could get them on Youtube! Thank you so much - I love this video, and refer anybody interested in Solar energy to it - not just for the content (which is fantastic) - but the references in it - such as http://science.energy.gov/~/media/bes/pdf/reports/files/seu_...

Nate Lewis is also a great speaker, and he makes such a convincing argument that Solar is the only possible future source of energy. (Nuclear doesn't even come close)

He also shows that putting solar panels on roofs doesn't even come close to what we need to do.

Worth watching every 3-4 months just to get your head around the scale of the problem.

Does it matter? It's not like we don't have the money, and even the most lackadaisical of climate change advocates can easily see the huge monetary cost it will impose. Overpaying by $200 billion for a very rare nuclear accident will be a bargain in comparison.

Also, there's the usual argument that with proliferation of a technology you gain efficiencies and costs drop (precipitously sometimes).

>>> Yes, if we had started focusing on nuclear power 40 years ago -- and if we had done it carefully and properly the first time -- it would have been the right decision.

Pushing the problem down the road because the solution isn't perfect probably is not the best idea at this point.

$200B could pay for 1/6 of the US's annual electricity production if spent directly on solar. US Energy consumption is 4.6e9 MWh/yr [1]. Assume $2.5 per installed watt of solar (Google search) ==> $200e9 / 2.5 Watt installed => 80e3 MW installed => 0.7e9 MWh/yr.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...

And that doesn't even account for the cost of the reactors...

>> This article, like many pro-nuclear arguments, doesn't address the most basic problem -- is nuclear power cost effective?

That is really not the most basic problem though. Cost is a non-issue if the alternative is green house gas emissions which will eventually cause an apocalyptic global warming effect. What good will all the cost savings do at that point?

My comment was written under the assumption that there is more than one path toward reducing CO2 emissions.

Putting that aside, I agree with you completely.

> When a reactor shuts down for repairs, they sometimes take decades to complete. As of today, it can be argued that many countries' nuclear power programs were a financial mistake.

Financial mistake or not, not being dependent on Petrol for your electricity production is a huge win. It solves many other (political) problems.