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Comment by ineedasername | Hacker News Reader

I don't think it's incompetence, it's a lack of political will. On energy, entrenched interests win out through regulatory capture and lobbying. On other infrastructure issues, most people and politicians simply don't care. Maybe once we get to a few bridge collapse per week.

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That is untrue. The Vogtle 3 and 4 construction project has received $12 billion in federal loan guarantees over the last ten years. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/22/reuters-america-update-1-u-s... The project is a complete clusterfuck and I think the cost overruns is about 300% or so of original estimates. The evidence clearly shows that US politicians love nuclear power. Despite that love they can't get nuclear reactors built. That is telling!

My comment was more in regards to infrastructure in general, not necessarily nuclear in particular. However, even there you're not completely right. Regardless of how much has been spent on failed/failing projects, many of these began their planning a decade or more in the past. Now, the tide has pretty much turned against nuclear power. More people oppose it than support it [0]

[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/190064/first-time-majority-oppo...

IMHO that's exactly wrong. The problem is far too much will, and not enough competence. This is the second forum where I've seen a "not enough will" comment, despite it making no sense when you look at the history of the excessive amounts of capital thrown unproductively at the task.

Nuclear has some amazing lobbying going for it, amazing backers that will throw away billions of tens of billions of dollars into black pits of construction hell, despite knowing the rate of so many construction projects before it. And they take this massive risk without the possibility of VC like upsides; the financial upside of nuclear is minesxule compared to the massive risk of building. It makes no financial sense to any rational person.

No, the problem is certainly not a lack of will. The problem is that those pushing nuclear don't know how to build it. They like the idea, but don't have the skills and can't hire people with the skills. Nuclear construction is all a game of raking in some contracting cash and making sure that when the inevitable lawsuit comes due to failed construction, your side doesn't lose.

As I said in my other reply, my comment was more in regards to infrastructure in general, not necessarily nuclear in particular. However, even there you're not completely right. Regardless of how much has been spent on failed/failing projects, many of these began their planning a decade or more in the past. Now, the tide has pretty much turned against nuclear power. More people oppose it than support it [0]

[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/190064/first-time-majority-oppo...

The point is that lack of support didn't cause nuclear to fail; nuclear's failure caused the current lack of support.

Bingo. This is simply a political problem and nothing else. FUD and "not-in-my-backyard!" reigns supreme when it comes to the final approval process.

As things currently stand, no group of politicians could survive the political fallout of getting a reactor build in their district. How can anything get done if doing so buys you unemployment from the ultimate cushy job of being an elected representative?

Also, no one, not even the most ardent supporters, really wants a reactor built anywhere near them or their kids playgrounds. The anti-nuke-power crowd has just done too good a job on the older generation to ever hope things can change for them.

Let's hope the Millennials can do a better job getting these things built.

First: I'm not anti-nuclear. It's tons cleaner than coal, and coal kills people every year.

But, if nat gas, wind, and solar are cheaper and faster to bring online, and can be build at pretty much any scale we want from single household to freaking huge, why would we build nuclear?

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