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Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

Why is too expensive to operate? China is still building them. Can’t we develop a standard design to reduce the red tape?

Nuclear had a good run until the Three Mile Island accident.

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I believe the inability of North America to complete the construction of new nuclear plants that have been approved or maintain the existing ones is a symptom of a shortage of competent labor and know how. We can’t organize ourselves to complete a large project. The people with the ability to build or maintain a nuclear plant are pursuing more lucrative careers at FAANG.

"Nuclear had a good run" until you realize that we never solved the long-term radioactive waste problem.

What China is or isn’t building is not a good guideline for infrastructure investment.

This isn't responsive to the parent comment in any way.

It absolutely is. The PRC tends to invest in infrastructure projects for the future, and not for today. That's something western politicians do an awful job of with their 4 year election cycles.

It needs lots of people, and many of the people must be highly trained. This makes it more suitable for low labor cost markets.

Nuclear was having serious cost escalation problems in the US even before the TMI accident.

Nuclear costs squat to run. It's all the construction costs you need to amortize over the life of the plant that screw you.

This is not true. Many nuclear plants in the US have been shut down because they cannot cover their operating costs. The plant in this thread is one of them. TMI hadn't been cash flow positive for six years.

The one near me (Seabrook Station) gets taken offline every 18 months for major maintenance. This is actually good for the local economy - because it costs so much money. They bring in workers from all across the country, who spend a lot of their wages at nearby motels etc.

Nuclear had some horrendous accidents before TMI. It’s just that they were military facilities, so it got hushed up. TMI was far from the first, it was just the first that didn’t get the cover of “national security” thrown over it. Look up Windscale, Kyshtym, and SL-1 for some prominent examples.

We can certainly do much better today, though.

Chinese nuclear engineering sounds like foreshadowing to the next Chernobyl.

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